Heart is a British radio network and brand of 13

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet ...

local stations operated by

Global Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

throughout the United Kingdom, broadcasting a mix of local and networked programming. Ten of the Heart stations are owned by Global, while the other three are operated under franchise agreements. The national version of the network is widely available on Global Player, Freeview, Sky,

Freesat Freesat is a British free-to-air satellite television service, first formed as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc and now owned by Digital UK. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008. F ...

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ven ...

and Digital One DAB. The Heart radio stations have a combined reach of 7.9 million listeners as of September 2022, making it the third most-popular radio network in the UK after

BBC Radio 2 BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 15 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the station broadcasts a wide range of content ...

and

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

. The total reach for all Heart-branded stations is over 10.1 million.

History

Launch

Heart began broadcasting in the West Midlands on 6 September 1994 as

100.7 Heart FM Heart North East is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to North East England from studios in Newcastle. History Century Radio Century Radio was the first regional station for Nort ...

, becoming the UK's third Independent Regional Radio station, five days after Century Radio in

North East England North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region has three current administrative levels below the region level in the region; combined authority, unitary authori ...

, and Jazz FM North West. The first song to be played on 100.7 Heart FM was ''

Something Got Me Started "Something Got Me Started" is a song by British soul and pop band Simply Red, released as the first single from their fourth album, ''Stars'' (1991). It was released in several forms — a 7-inch single, a 12-inch single, and a CD version ...

'' by

Simply Red Simply Red are a British soul and pop band formed in Manchester in 1985. The lead vocalist of the band is singer and songwriter Mick Hucknall, who, by the time the band initially disbanded in 2010, was the only original member left. Since the ...

. Its original format of "

soft adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet s ...

" music included artists such as

Lionel Richie Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a songwriter and the co-lead singer of funk band the Commodores; writing and recor ...

and

Tina Turner Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939) is an American-born Swiss retired singer and actress. Widely referred to as the " Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before ...

. Reflecting this, its early slogan was ''100.7 degrees cooler!'' Heart 106.2 began test transmissions in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in August 1995, prior to the station launch on 5 September. This included live broadcasts of WPLJ from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. In 1996 the Heart programming format saw the "soft AC" music replaced with a generally more neutral rock "n" roll playlist.

Century 106 Gem is an Independent Local Radio station based in Nottingham, England, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to the East Midlands. As of September 2022, the station has a weekly audience of 318,000 listen ...

in the

East Midlands The East Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the ITL 1 statistical regions of England, first level of International Territorial Level, ITL for Statistics, statistical purposes. It comprises the eastern half of the area tradi ...

became the third station of the Heart network in 2005 after

GCap Media GCap Media was a British commercial radio company formed from the merger of the Capital Radio Group and GWR Group. The merger was completed in May 2005. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. ...

sold Century. Chrysalis' radio holdings were sold to Global Radio in 2007. When GCap Media was taken over by Global Radio in 2008, it announced plans to dissolve the 41-station One Network, with one station ( Power FM) becoming part of the

Galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

network, four stations (

BRMB Free Radio Birmingham is an Independent Local Radio station based in Birmingham, England, owned and operated by Bauer Radio, Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Birmingham and the West Midlands (region), West Midlands. As o ...

, Beacon Radio, Mercia FM and Wyvern FM) forming a West Midlands regional network, seven stations joining

Capital FM Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capitals, List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the dura ...

to form The Hit Music Network and the remaining 29 stations forming the Heart Network. Heart East Midlands was sold to Orion Media, along with the West Midlands network of local stations, due to the same competition concerns that had forced its earlier sale to Chrysalis.

Network restructuring

Between June and September 2010, Global Radio merged the majority of the 33 Heart stations to create a smaller network of 18 local and regional stations, in line with new

OFCOM The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

guidelines on local output requirements. Two Hit Music Network stations were also closed and merged with Heart stations. Stations in

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, the West Midlands, the

and

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershir ...

were unaffected by the changes. Heart Cymru, serving Gwynedd and Anglesey, moved its studios from Bangor to Wrexham but retained its extended local output of 10 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Heart North West and Wales retained an opt-out on 96.3FM (the North Wales Coast) for Welsh language programming. On 1 January 2011, Orion Media, the owners of Heart East Midlands (one of the original three Heart stations) renamed and relaunched the station as ' Gem 106', ending a franchise agreement with Global Radio formed when Global purchased GCap – the agreement allowed Orion to use the Heart identity and carry networked programming from London. The move saw Heart's networked programming replaced by local output from Nottingham.

Network expansion

On 19 March 2012, Global Radio announced it had bought the Cornwall ILR station Atlantic FM from joint owners Tindle Radio and Camel Media. Atlantic FM became part of the Heart Network and merged with Heart Devon on Monday 7 May 2012 to form

Heart South West Heart South West was a regional radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcast to Devon and Cornwall from studios in Exeter. The station launched on Friday 27 August 2010 under the name 'Heart De ...

, which is based in Exeter. On 6 February 2014, Global Radio announced it would be rebranding all Real Radio stations as Heart and would be selling

Real Radio Yorkshire Heart Yorkshire (previously Real Radio Yorkshire) is a regional radio station owned by Communicorp UK and operated by Global as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to South and West Yorkshire from studios in Leeds.

and the Northern licence for Real Radio Wales to Communicorp. The Communicorp-owned stations use Heart's network programming and branding under a franchise agreement with Global. Global Radio extended the Heart network to the Real Radio network of regional stations from Tuesday 6 May 2014. The two stations based in Wrexham – Heart North West and Wales and Heart Cymru – became part of the Capital FM Network on the same date. On 20 November 2017, CN Group announced The Bay would be sold to

along with sister station Lakeland Radio – the sale was finalised by 1 December 2017. The Bay was rebranded as Heart, with Lakeland Radio becoming Smooth on 4 March 2018. Music from the

1970s File:1970s decade montage.jpg, Clockwise from top left: President of the United States, U.S. President Richard Nixon doing the V sign#The V for Victory campaign and the victory-freedom sign, V for Victory sign after his resignation from office fo ...

1980s File:1980s replacement montage02.PNG, 420px, From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, ''Columbia'', lifts off in 1981; US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ease tensions between the two superpowers, leading to t ...

were however removed from the original FM station after Christmas 2017, probably due to the station making more room for new music to come, or the popularity of Heart 70s & Heart 80s.

Consolidation

In February 2019, following OFCOM's decision to relax local content obligations from commercial radio, it was announced Heart would replace its local breakfast and weekend shows with additional networked programming from London by the end of the year. This reduced total weekly hours of local programming on each station from 43 to 15 and led to dozens of job losses.Global to network Capital, Heart and Smooth breakfast shows
RadioToday, 26 February 2019 Drivetime output were reduced from 23 localised shows to 10 programmes covering enlarged areas, formed from the merger of Heart stations. Ten studios producing local programming were closed. Localised news, traffic updates and advertising was retained across all licence areas. In April 2019, it was reported the local ''Heart Breakfast'' shows would be replaced by a national ''Heart Breakfast'' show from London on 3 June 2019, presented by Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden. The merging stations ceased local output on 31 May 2019. In Hertfordshire, a further change saw

Heart Hertfordshire Heart Hertfordshire (previously known as ''Hertfordshire's Mercury 96.6'') is a local radio station owned by Communicorp UK and operated by Global as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts across Hertfordshire from studios in Watford. In 2 ...

, based in Watford, merged with

BOB fm BOB FM is the on-air brand of a number of FM radio stations in the United States and formerly in Canada. The BOB FM format mostly concentrates on album rock, alternative rock and pop hits from the 1980s and 90s, especially those popular during ...

– following its acquisition by Communicorp – to form a single countywide service. Stations in the North East of England, Wales, central and southern Scotland, the West Midlands and Yorkshire continue to serve their single licence areas as before.

List of stations

As of May 2019, Heart's regional network consists of twelve stations: As of 23 May 2022, Heart's national spin-offs consist of five stations, broadcast from Global's London headquarters:

Programming and presenters

Heart's network programming is produced and broadcast from the headquarters of

Leicester Square Leicester Square ( ) is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. It was laid out in 1670 as Leicester Fields, which was named after the recently built Leicester House, itself named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester ...

in central London. Most of the network's output is broadcast live, although some weekend shows are voicetracked. As of 21 June 2019, ''Heart's Club Classics'' is simulcast with sister station Heart Dance. ''

The Sky VIP Official Big Top 40 ''The Sky VIP Official Big Top 40 from Global'' is a radio chart show broadcast every Sunday from 4 to 7pm on Global's Capital and Heart networks, presented by Will Manning. It was started in May 2009 but the show is the descendant of '' The N ...

'' on Sunday afternoons is simulcast with Heart's sister network, Capital.

Networked presenters

* Toby Anstis (''Heart’s Club Classics'': Friday evenings) *

Emma Bunton Emma Lee Bunton (born 21 January 1976) is an English singer, songwriter, actress, and media personality. She rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of the girl group Spice Girls, in which she was nicknamed Baby Spice. With over 100 million rec ...

(Sunday evenings) * Dev Griffin (Monday-Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons) * Zoe Hardman (''Heart Breakfast'': Sunday mornings) * Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston (''Heart Breakfast'': weekdays) * Mark Wright (Saturday afternoons)

Regional presenters

* Jason King (otherwise known as JK) and Kelly Brook (''Heart Drivetime'' in

, Saturday mid-mornings) * Des Clarke & Jennifer Reoch (''Heart Drivetime'' in Central Scotland) *

Rich Clarke Richard "Rich" Clarke (born 19 August 1978) is an English radio presenter and DJ from Worcester, England, currently presenting with Global. Student radio At Royal Holloway, University of London he co-operated with future BBC journalist Ed Harry ...

(''Heart Drivetime'' in the South of England) * Ed James (''Heart Drivetime'' in the West Midlands) * Emma Morton-Smith (''Heart Drivetime'' in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

) Ben Atkinson(''Heart Drivetime'' in

West Country The West Country (occasionally Westcountry) is a loosely defined area of South West England, usually taken to include all, some, or parts of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and, less commonly, Wiltshire, Glouce ...

)

Former presenters

* Sian Welby (now at ''

)'' * Jenni Falconer (now at ''

Smooth London Smooth London is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global as part of the Smooth Radio network. It broadcasts to the Greater London area from Croydon transmitting station on 102.2 MHz. It broadcasts a soft adult contemporary radi ...

)'' * Ellie Taylor * Rochelle Humes * Jason Donovan * Stephen Mulhern and

Emma Willis Emma Louise Willis (née Griffiths; born 18 March 1976) is an English broadcaster. She is known for her television and radio work with Channel 5, BBC, ITV, and Heart FM.

Neil 'Roberto' Williams Neil Roberto Williams (born 20 July 1978), known by his stage name Roberto, is a British radio presenter, television presenter, voice-over artist and DJ. Williams was born in London. He currently presents the breakfast show on Heart 80s from H ...

(now at Heart 80s) * Margherita Taylor (Now at '' Classic FM'' & ''

Smooth Radio Smooth Radio may refer to: * Smooth Radio (2010), the original national network in the UK * Smooth Radio (2014) See also * Smoothfm smoothfm is an Australian commercial radio network owned and operated by NOVA Entertainment. From original ...

)'' * Harriet Scott (now at Magic) * Lilah Parsons *

Annaliese Dayes The eighteenth cycle of '' America's Next Top Model'' (subtitled as ''America's Next Top Model: British Invasion'') premiered on February 29, 2012 and was the twelfth season to air on The CW. It occupied the time slot of the final two scheduled ...

News

All Heart stations broadcast local news bulletins each day – updates air hourly from 6am to 7pm on weekdays and from 6am to 12pm at weekends, similar to how Capital broadcasts news updates. In accordance with OFCOM speech requirements, some Heart stations produce separate localised bulletins. For example, Heart West produces bulletins for Bristol and Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cornwall.

Network presentation

As of 2014, the network uses jingles and themes produced by ReelWorld Europe, based in Salford. Previously, Heart used a jingle package, composed by the Seattle-based music production company IQ Beats,

Criticisms

In August 2010, listeners in

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

and Crawley, West Sussex, complained about the merger of Heart stations and called for a boycott of the station. There have been numerous criticisms made by listeners of the repetitive nature of Heart radio stations playlist in various outlets. A public complaint to the regulator

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

in 2012 that the "More Music Variety" slogan was materially misleading was not pursued as Ofcom deemed that it did not warrant further investigation. Ofcom stated that "We did not consider listeners were materially misled by this slogan." Further complaints were made to the station in 2019, largely regarding the merger of some Heart stations and the reduction in local programming, following the relaxation of local content guidelines by

Networked slogans

* 1994-1996: "100.7 degrees cooler" (West Midlands) * 1995–1996: "106.2 degrees cooler" (London) * 1996–2017: "More Music Variety" * 2017–present: "Turn Up the Feel Good" * 2017–2019 Heart Breakfast slogan: " ity/regions favourite Breakfast Show"

References

External links

{{Authority control

Heart The heart is a muscular organ found in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon diox ...