Heart South West

Heart South West

City	Exeter
Broadcast area	Barnstaple, Cornwall, Exeter, Plymouth, South Hams, Torbay
Branding	This is Heart
Slogan	Turn up the Feel Good!
Frequency	96.2-107.0MHz, DAB East Devon & Exeter 103.0MHz East Devon, 97.0MHz Exeter Torbay & South East Devon 96.4MHz The South Hams 100.5MHz Totnes, 100.8MHz Dartmouth, 101.2MHz Soar, 101.9MHz Ivybridge Plymouth 96.6MHz Tavistock, 97.0MHz Plymouth North Devon 96.2MHz, 97.3MHz Ilfracombe Cornwall 107.0MHz Redruth, 105.1MHz East Cornwall & West Devon
First air date	27 August 2010
Format	Hot AC
Owner	Global
Website	Barnstaple Cornwall Exeter Plymouth South Hams Torbay

Heart South West is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to Devon and Cornwall from studios in Exeter 7 hours a day, the rest from London. The station launched on Friday 27 August 2010 under the name Heart Devon, as a result of a merger between Heart Exeter and Heart Torbay (formerly Gemini FM), Heart Plymouth (formerly Plymouth Sound), Heart North Devon (formerly Lantern Radio) and Heart South Devon (formerly South Hams Radio). On Monday 7 May 2012, the station merged again with Atlantic FM in Cornwall, and was renamed Heart South West.

History

The regional station originally broadcast as six separate stations - Plymouth Sound began broadcasting to Plymouth and surrounding areas in May 1975, Lantern Radio served North Devon from October 1992, Gemini FM broadcast separate services for East and South Devon from January 1995 onwards (DevonAir Radio served the dual-franchise area until losing its broadcast licence on New Year's Eve 1994) and South Hams Radio launched in the South Hams district of South Devon in December 1998. Atlantic FM began broadcasting to Cornwall from July 2006.

By 1999, Plymouth Sound, Gemini FM and Lantern FM were under the ownership of the GWR Group, which merged with the Capital Radio Group to form GCap Media six years later. In that same year, the stations were put up for sale as they were considered outside of the company's primary target area. In the event, the sale did not go ahead as all of the bids made fell short of expectations. In 2008, the group was taken over by Global Radio, which eventually took ownership of South Hams Radio as a joint venture with the UKRD Group. A year later, the stations were rebranded as Heart.

On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced it would merge the five Devon stations as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 to 16.^[1] The new station began broadcasting on Friday 27 August 2010 from studios in Exeter, leading to the closure of studios in Plymouth, Torquay, Barnstaple and Kingsbridge.^[2]

On 19 March 2012, Global Radio announced it had bought Atlantic FM from joint owners Tindle Radio and Camel Media.^[3] Atlantic FM became part of the Heart Network and merged with Heart Devon on Monday 7 May 2012, forming Heart South West. In August 2012, Global Radio applied for a format change, to remove its commitment to speech content for the Heart Cornwall licence,^[4] however on 16 October 2012 this was rejected by media regulator Ofcom.^[5]

Programming

Local programming is produced and broadcast from Heart's Exeter studios from 6-10am and 4-7pm on weekdays, 6-10am on Saturdays and 12pm-4pm on Sundays. Separate drivetime shows are produced for Devon and Cornwall on weekdays alongside split news and travel bulletins for the two counties.

All networked programming originates from Global Radio's London headquarters, including the syndicated Vodafone Big Top 40 on Sunday afternoons.

Availability and transmitters

References

External links