Heart Essex (regional)
| City of license | Chelmsford |
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| Broadcast area | Essex and East Hertfordshire |
| Frequency | 96.1 MHz RDS: HEART___, 96.3, 97.5, 102.6 MHz RDS: HEART_SX 101.7 MHz RDS: HEART___ |
| Format | Adult Contemporary |
| Audience share | 12% (March 2011, [1]) |
| Owner | Global Radio |
| Website | Heart Essex |
Heart Essex is an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to Essex and East Hertfordshire. The station began broadcasting from studios in Chelmsford on Monday 26 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Essex (Chelmsford & Southend) (formerly Essex FM), Heart Colchester (formerly SGR Colchester) and Ten 17.
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[edit] 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 off-shoot 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 - 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 Heart Network.[1] The new station, Heart Essex, began broadcasting from Chelmsford on Monday 26 July 2010, leading to the closure of studios in Colchester and Harlow.[2] 96.1 & 101.7 MHz are still classed as separate stations however.
[edit] Programming
[edit] Local presenters
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[edit] Networked presenters
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[edit] News
Heart Essex broadcasts local news updates on weekdays every 30 minutes between 6am and 9am, and then hourly from 9am to 6pm. At the weekend, local news is broadcast hourly between 8am and 11am. National news updates are broadcast at 7pm weekdays and at 6am, 7am, 12noon, 1pm and 2pm at the weekend.
[edit] News staff
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Broadcast Journalist |
[edit] References
- ^ Global Radio to halve number of local Heart stations, mediaguardian.co.uk, 21 June 2010 Archived 1 January 2011 at WebCite
- ^ Heart slims but strengthens, RadioToday, 21 June 2010 Archived 1 January 2011 at WebCite
[edit] External links
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