Heart Essex was a local

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

owned and operated by

Global Radio Global Media & Entertainment Limited, trading as Global, is a British media company formed in 2007. It is the owner of the largest commercial radio company in Europe having expanded through a number of historical acquisitions, including Chrysal ...

as part of the

Heart The heart is a muscular Organ (biology), organ found in humans and other animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels. The heart and blood vessels together make the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrie ...

network. It broadcast to

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

and

East Hertfordshire East Hertfordshire is one of ten Non-metropolitan district, local government districts in Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Hertford, the county town of Hertfordshire. The largest town in the district is Bishop's Stortford, and th ...

from studios in

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Colchester and Southend-on-Sea. It is located north-east of London ...

. The station launched on Monday 26 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Essex (Chelmsford & Southend) (formerly Essex FM),

Heart Colchester Heart Colchester (formerly SGR Colchester) was an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to Colchester and the surrounding areas. The station was launched in 1993 as SGR Colchester by the East Anglian Radio group, which also operated the Ips ...

(formerly SGR Colchester) and Ten 17.

History

The regional station originally broadcast as three separate stations - Essex Radio began broadcasting to the Southend-on-Sea area in September 1981 and to Chelmsford three months later. Harlow's Ten 17 launched in May 1993 as a part-time opt out from Essex FM and later expanded to become a fully separate service. Meanwhile, SGR Colchester began broadcasting as an offshoot of Ipswich's SGR FM in October 1993. Essex FM and Ten 17 originally came under the ownership of the Essex Radio Group while SGR Colchester was owned by East Anglian Radio, which was brought up in 1996 by

GWR Group GCap Media was a British commercial radio company formed from the merger of the Capital Radio Group and GWR Group. The merger was completed on 9 May 2005. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Inde ...

- within four years, the two other ILR stations in Essex came under GWR ownership. SGR Colchester was among the first stations to be rebranded under the Heart moniker in January 2009 and followed six months later by Essex FM. As a Hit Music Network station, Ten 17 retained its local identity - but as with the Heart stations in Chelmsford and Colchester, local output had been restricted to breakfast and weekday drivetime shows. On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced plans to merge all three stations as part of plans to restructuring plans for

. The new station, ''Heart Essex'', began broadcasting from Chelmsford on Monday 26 July 2010, leading to the closure of studios in Colchester and Harlow.

Station merger

On 26 February 2019, Global announced Heart Essex would be merged with three sister stations -

Heart Cambridgeshire Heart Cambridgeshire was a local radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcast to Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and eastern Northamptonshire and parts of surrounding counties from studios in Cambri ...

, Heart East Anglia and Heart Four Counties. From 3 June 2019, local output consists of a three-hour regional Drivetime show on weekdays, alongside localised news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising. Heart Essex's studios in Chelmsford closed with operations moving to

Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of Milton Keynes urban area, its urban area was 264,349. The River Great Ouse forms t ...

- the station ceased local programming on 31 May 2019. Local breakfast and weekend shows were replaced with network programming from London. Heart East began broadcasting regional programming on 3 June 2019.Amanda Holden to join Jamie Theakston for Heart UK Breakfast
Radio Today, 29 April 2019

References

External links

Heart Essex
{{coord missing, Essex Radio stations in Essex

Radio stations established in 2010 Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom