Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire

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Free Radio (Herefordshire & Worcestershire)
Free Radio network logo.png
Broadcast area Herefordshire and Worcestershire
Slogan "Let The Music Set You Free"
Frequency
  • FM: 96.7, 97.6, and 102.8 MHz, RDS: Free H&W,
  • Online
First air date 4 October 1982 (1982-10-04)
Format CHR
Audience share 8.5% (September 2012, [1])
Owner Orion Media
Website freeradio.co.uk/herefordshire
freeradio.co.uk/worcestershire

Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire (formerly Radio Wyvern) is an Independent Local Radio station serving Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The station, owned and operated by Orion Media, broadcasts from studios in Worcester on 96.7, 97.6, and 102.8 FM, and is part of the Free Radio network.

History

Radio Wyvern originally went on-air on 4 October 1982. The original Wyvern name derived from the River Wye and River Severn, the rivers running through Hereford and Worcester respectively (the name was proposed in the 1970s for what would become the county of Hereford and Worcester). The initial Presentation team consisted of Sammy Southall at Breakfast, Roy Leonard in the morning, Graham Hughes in the afternoon and rock shows, and Mike George at drivetime. Weekend presenters included Jeff Roberts, Rob Yarnold and Bob Lee. Managing Director from 1984 until 1996 was Norman Bilton who joined Wyvern from Two Counties Radio in Bournemouth and Metro Radio in Newcastle.

In its early days, the station opened at 6am (7am on Sundays) and closed at 8pm, before it extended broadcasting hours to 24 hours a day by joining up with Beacon Radio from 10pm and then a wider network of Midlands stations from 1am. Radio Wyvern took the SuperStation overnight service in the late 1980s, and when that closed abruptly, a local Late Show was introduced, with the overnight output from 1am shared with BRMB and Mercia FM.

Saturday mornings were alive with the 'Saturday Zoo Crew' - The Professor, Curvy Claire and Ed Douglas (who also presented a brilliant and quirky nightly evening show). The Zoo Show and Ed's evening programme also featured 'The Ed Douglas Fan Club' (Tim Gunter from Monmouth) - which consisted of spoof characters such as John (Johnny) Cole (Cheerio Now and is your Daddy in?), Captain Balderdash, Corporal Nappyrash, Lady Balderdash, Dame Edna, Jason Donovan (he's not here really Emily) et al. These were all voiced by Tim with no scripts but often supported by his Music mixes (Ed Douglas Megamix) and ridiculous jingles. Ed & Tim were renowned for taking the mickey out of Head of Programming Sammy Southall, including a classic 'Proper Clutch Control' driving lesson. Ed Douglas moved to BBC Hereford & Worcester and then BBC Southern Counties.

Other notable personnel were 'Dance Factory' Rich Edwards and Jason Harrold (>Red Dragon and then Heart Radio in 2015)

After its licence was renewed in 1994, the station split into Wyvern FM, playing newer music, and Wyvern AM (Quality and Variety), which was essentially a gold service, with both services initially simulcasting from 7pm-6am. The AM station was rebranded as Classic Gold soon afterwards, and was sold to Murfin Music International because of ownership regulations and the large overlap with neighbouring Classic Gold 774 in Gloucestershire. Some time later, it was rebranded as Classic Hits, and by this time a fully-fledged local service, with no links to Wyvern FM or the Classic Gold network. In 2007, Laser Broadcasting abruptly relaunched the AM station as SunshineRadio.

The station has played host to many well-known broadcasters over the years. Neil Fox began his professional broadcasting career here in 1984, and the line Wyvern News, this is Howard Hughes became very familiar to listeners. Rich Edwards, who joined in the very early days, presented on Classic Hits until its abrupt closure in 2007. David Holdsworth, now with the BBC was the station's News Editor, and Eleanor Oldroyd, now with Five Live, was a member of the Sport team. Several of the original presenters including Mike George, Graham Hughes, and Roy Leonard went on to long careers with BBC radio and TV.

Wyvern was latterly acquired by GWR and later, Global Radio, who moved the station to new studios at Kirkham House in the Perdiswell Park area of Worcester. On 8 August 2008, it was confirmed that due to competition 'conflict of interests' in the West Midlands (and in other areas), Wyvern FM would be sold by Global Radio, along with other West Midlands owned GCap/Global stations BRMB, Mercia FM, Heart 106, and Beacon Radio. In July 2009, the station was sold officially to a company backed by Lloyds Development Capital and Phil Riley[1] called Orion Media. Following the take over In January 2010, Wyvern FM rebranded as Wyvern and launched a new station slogan, "Made for Herefordshire & Worcestershire".

On 9 January 2012, Orion Media announced that Wyvern would be rebranded as Free Radio Herefordshire and Worcestershire from April 2012, along with its sister West Midlands stations BRMB, Beacon, and Mercia. Local programming is retained at breakfast and weekday drivetime.[2][3]

The Wyvern brand was phased out on 21 March 2012 in preparation for the rebrand, which took place at 7pm on Monday 26 March 2012.

Programming

Local programming is currently produced and broadcast from Free Radio's Worcester studios from 6-9am and 3-7pm on weekdays and from 7-11am at weekends, with the majority of networked programming broadcast from Free Radio's Birmingham studios. The former Sunday morning show with Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes that aired until 20 Deccember 2015 originated from the Bauer Media studios in Soho, Central London, while The Vodafone Big Top 40 is produced by Global Radio at its Capital studios in London for broadcast on 145 commercial radio stations in the UK.

The station's main presenters include Richard Hurst and Helen Wheels (Hursty and Helen) and David Francis (weekday drivetime).

Past presenters

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References

  1. ↑ Radio Today
  2. ↑ BRMB, Mercia, Beacon, Wyvern to be Free, Radio Today, 9 January 2012
  3. ↑ Feature: Orion's Phil Riley on Free Radio, RadioToday, 11 January 2012
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links


Bauer Radio is a UK-based radio division of the Bauer Media Group.

The Bauer network is divisible into two main groups, the Bauer City & Bauer National portfolios, with Place consisting of locally focused services primarily broadcast on FM/AM and local digital platforms, and Passion consisting of national and quasi-national music-genre services delivered nationally and quasi-nationally, mainly through digital platforms.

History

Bauer's The Place network was originally known as the Big City Network. In 2006, many of the former Scottish Radio Holdings stations were added to the network and branded as Big City Network Scotland and Northern Ireland, although all stations kept their original logos, with the exception of CFM. West Sound was the only AM station in the network although it did not carry any of the networked programming carried by the FM stations.

In April 2011 Bauer Radio announced it would be restructuring its radio portfolio into two divisions: locally focused and heritage stations, including many of the Big City stations, South Coast station Wave 105 and London station Magic 105.4 FM would also become part of the "Bauer Place" division, with branded music-category stations such as Kiss and Kerrang Radio forming a second sub-brand, "Bauer Passion" - the Big City Network identity was dropped as part of the restructuring.[1]

In April 2013, Bauer announced it would merge its two North East England stations, Metro Radio and TFM. Both stations broadcast shared programming from Newcastle and Manchester while carrying separate branding, news bulletins and advertising.[2]

In September 2014, Bauer announced it would be restructuring its radio portfolio as from January 2015. Magic AM in England was dropped in favour of the stations reverting to their heritage station names.[3][4] The stations now form part of the new 'City 2' network serving both Scotland and Northern England. A 'City 3' network on DAB replacing The Hits Radio (in most areas) launched on Monday 19 January 2015.

At the beginning of March, 2016, Bauer moved two of its popular stations, Planet Rock and Absolute 80s onto the Sound Digital multiplex, meaning that many thousands of people were no longer able to listen to those stations. East Anglia, the South West, most of Kent, Cumbria, most of Wales and Scotland and many areas in between had none of these transmitters at all. A Change petition for Planet Rock was started on 4th March and numbers increased as people learned that they would no longer be able to listen to what had been the only nationwide DAB rock station. The issue was reported in local press in some areas [5] Planet Rock and Absolute 80s began broadcasting just a retune message loop from 18th April and the switch-off occurred on 30th April.

On 6 May 2016, Bauer announced it had brought Midlands radio group Orion Media for an undisclosed fee, reportedly between £40 and £50 million.[6][7]

Radio

Bauer City

  • Bauer City 1 – 16 Hot AC local radio stations on FM and DAB in Northern England and Scotland
  • Bauer City 2 – 15 AC local radio stations on DAB and AM in Northern England and Scotland
  • Bauer City 3 – 12 CHR local radio stations on DAB in Northern England and Scotland
  • Free Radio - 4 CHR local radio stations on FM and DAB and 3 80s-themed stations on AM and DAB in the West Midlands

Bauer National

Other

DAB multiplexes

Bauer operates twelve wholly owned DAB multiplexes and also six jointly owned multiplexes with other operators (three with UTV Radio and three with Global Radio). Bauer operates the following DAB multiplexes:

Bauer Digital Radio

Bauer's wholly owned digital multiplexes are primarily located in areas where the firm operates local FM stations; the original group of Bauer (formerly Emap) DAB multiplexes are located in the following areas:

Score Digital

As part of Emap's takeover of Scottish Radio Holdings, the firm gained control of Score Digital, the DAB multiplex operator owned by SRH. Competition guidelines required the merged firm to divest of one of the multiplexes obtained in this deal, and so the Ayr multiplex formerly run by Score was sold on to Arqiva. The remaining Score multiplexes have since been relabelled as Bauer multiplexes.[8]

The ex-Score DAB multiplexes are located in:

UTV Bauer Digital

The Wireless Group and Emap entered into a venture to run the following three DAB multiplexes. These multiplexes were initially branded as TWG-Emap multiplexes; following the sale of TWG to UTV (creating UTV Radio), the multiplexes were relabelled as UTV-Emap, and following the sale of Emap's radio assets to Bauer, the blocks were renamed again as UTV-Bauer. Bauer owns 30 per cent of the UTV-Bauer venture, with UTV holding the remaining 70 per cent.

CE Digital

Bauer and Global Radio jointly own CE Digital Ltd, each holding 50% of the venture. The CE operation was established by Emap in partnership with the Capital Radio Group, which through mergers subsequently became part of GCap Media and later Global Radio. The 'CE' multiplexes take their name from the initials of Capital and Emap, and have not been renamed despite the identity changes of both operators.

CE Digital operate the following DAB multiplexes:

References

  1. ↑ "Bauer drops Big City image", Radio Today, 14 Apr 2011 Archived 4 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ TFM leaves Teesside to share with Metro, RadioToday, 5 April 2013
  3. ↑ Greatest Hits Network Change request form Ofcom
  4. ↑ Magic Changes Ofcom Request Form Ofcom
  5. ↑ http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/digital_radio_listeners_in_east_anglia_miss_out_on_18_dab_stations_1_4506913
  6. ↑ Bauer buys radio group Orion Media, The Guardian, 6 May 2016
  7. ↑ Orion Media sold to Bauer for £50m, The Telegraph, 6 May 2016
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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