GWR FM (Bristol & Bath)
Encyclopedia
Heart 96.3 was a radio station serving Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 and surrounding areas and broadcasting on 96.3 MHz in Bristol and 103.0 MHz in Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare is a seaside resort, town and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset, which is within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located on the Bristol Channel coast, south west of Bristol, spanning the coast between the bounding high ground of Worlebury...

. Launched in 1981 as Radio West, it was merged with neighbouring Wiltshire Radio and relaunched under the name GWR in 1985, retaining the name through several changes of ownership until rebranding in March 2009. Heart Bristol merged with sister stations in Somerset and Bath to form Heart West Country
Heart West Country
Heart West Country is an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to Bristol and Somerset. The station began broadcasting on 16 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Bristol , Heart Bath and Heart Somerset .-History:The regional station originally broadcast as three separate stations...

.

Radio West

Radio West began broadcasting on Tuesday 27 October 1981, eleven years after the region's first local radio station BBC Radio Bristol
BBC Radio Bristol
BBC Radio Bristol is the BBC Local Radio service for the English city of Bristol and the surrounding former Avon area. Launched in September 1970, it broadcasts from Broadcasting House in Bristol on FM frequencies 94.9 MHz , 104.6 MHz , 103.6 MHz , on AM 1548 kHz and on DAB.The...

 launched. The station started a full service commercial radio station on 96.3 MHz FM
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...

 and 1260 kHz AM
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent...

 (238 metres medium wave) - the culmination of a merger between two companies bidding for the Bristol and Bath radio licence (Radio Avonside and Bristol Channel) awarded by the then Independent Broadcasting Authority
Independent Broadcasting Authority
The Independent Broadcasting Authority was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television - and commercial/independent radio broadcasts...

. The choice of on-air name proved to be simple when the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 aired a series called Shoestring complete with the fictitious Radio West.

Radio West's cost base was large due to the extravagant studio premises that had been purchased at The Waterside in Bristol, and the lack of audience led to disastrous advertising revenue and losses of £300,000 by 1983. John Bradford, who had helped found Mercia Sound
Mercia FM
Mercia is an Independent Local Radio station serving Coventry and Warwickshire. The station, owned and operated by Orion Media broadcasts from studios shared with BRMB at Broad Street in Birmingham.-History:...

 in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

, joined the station in 1983. Alongside programme controller Dave Cash
Dave Cash (disc jockey)
Dave Cash is a veteran British radio presenter who works for BBC Radio Kent, having had previous spells at Radio London, BBC Radio 1, Capital Radio, Radio West , Country 1035 and PrimeTime Radio.-Radio career:Cash was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, U.K...

 (ex Capital Radio
Capital Gold
Gold is a network of oldies radio stations which was formed by the merger of the Capital Gold network and the Classic Gold Network in August 2007...

) (also the first voice heard on the station), Nino Firetto
Nino Firetto
Nino Firetto is a radio presenter, TV host and actor, currently based in Exeter, England.-Biography:Nino Firetto shot to fame first as a DJ in the 1970s, then as a television personality in the 1980s...

 (the station's first breakfast presenter), Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker (DJ)
Johnnie Walker MBE is a popular British veteran radio disc jockey and broadcaster....

 (ex Caroline
Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly...

, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

) and Roger Day
Roger Day
Broadcaster Roger "Twiggy" Day Real name Roger Thomas currently presents on six BBC Local Radio stations across southern England.-Early career:...

 (ex Caroline, Piccadilly
Key 103
Key 103 is an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to the city of Manchester and the north west of England. Its output is principally contemporary pop and dance music. Formerly owned by Trans World Communications, EMAP and now by Bauer Radio, Key 103 is part of Bauer's Place Network of...

, and latterly BRMB
Brmb
brmb is a local radio station based in Birmingham, UK, owned and operated by Orion Media. The station broadcasts on 96.4 FM, DAB Digital Radio in the West Midlands and online...

) were brought in, but to no avail. The station still slipped and programmes had to be curtailed in October 1983. The station closed down each evening at 7:30pm, while resources were concentrated on daytime output. After more fine tuning of the station's output, Radio West became more mainstream and by late 1984, the prospects were more promising with the return of evening and late night output keeping the station on air until 1am (midnight on Sundays).

Although the station was broadcasting programmes of a high quality (including award-nominated computer show Datarama), listeners remained loyal to the BBC's Radio Bristol, already established as the radio station for the area.

Financially commercial radio struggled to make any money as the 1980s economy in Britain was hampered by union strikes. Radio West had not made any profit since it started and looked set to close, when the neighbouring local station Wiltshire Radio, based in Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...

 made an approach to merge the two stations, creating a station covering from Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare is a seaside resort, town and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset, which is within the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. It is located on the Bristol Channel coast, south west of Bristol, spanning the coast between the bounding high ground of Worlebury...

 in the west to Swindon
Swindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...

 and Hungerford
Hungerford
Hungerford is a market town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, 9 miles west of Newbury. It covers an area of and, according to the 2001 census, has a population of 5,559 .- Geography :...

 in the east, with opt out programming for the two areas. This merger was approved by the government and was completed in September 1985.

Some of the 1980s DJs included Dave Barrett, Dave Bowen, Mark Seaman
Mark Seaman
Mark Seaman has over thirty years experience as an award winning television and radio presenter and producer, and has also acted professionally for much of that time. More recently he has found success as a playwright and director for the stage, with a number of his scripts being published and...

, Andy Westgate, Alan Roberts, Gary Vincent, Steve Orchard, Sandy Martin, Keith Francis, David Hamilton, Andy Henly and a returning Johnnie Walker.

GWR launch

Radio West formally closed at just after midnight on Monday 9 September 1985 with a special final programme hosted by Trevor Fry and the final closedown announcement from Mark Seaman (the station's programme organiser). Test transmissions for GWR commenced the next day before it launched as a 24-hour full service station at 6am on Monday 1 October 1985.

The new station aired separate output for Bristol and Wiltshire at breakfast, mid-morning, afternoons and drive time - an opt-out service for West Wiltshire was also introduced but closed after just a few weeks. New disc jockeys were brought in, however the station still sounded like competitor Radio Bristol with its mix of music, news and talk (as was the trend in British commercial radio at the time due to needletime
Needle time
Needle time was created in the United Kingdom by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited, in order to restrict the amount of recorded music that could be transmitted by British Broadcasting Corporation during the course of any 24-hour period. Until 1967 the BBC was allowed to...

 restrictions) and listening figures were not improving.

Split services

GWR Radio began splitting frequencies as required by the government - which declared its desire to end simulcasting on both FM and AM. GWR Radio launched Brunel Radio
Brunel Classic Gold
Gold is a regional AM station in the west of England.The station carries the Gold programming, except for a local 4-hour afternoon programme from 12pm to 4pm, which is different in the stations two sub-regions.-Programmes:* Breakfast...

 on 15 November 1988, a "golden oldies" station on 1260 kHz in Bristol, and 936/1161 kHz AM in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

. In the early 1990s Brunel started networking programming to 2CR Radio in Bournemouth
Bournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...

 and Radio 210
2-Ten FM
Heart Berkshire was an Independent Local Radio station, serving Berkshire and North Hampshire from studios in Reading.-About:...

 in Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....

, Berkshire. Each station had Classic Gold appended to the end of their names (e.g. Brunel Classic Gold, 210 Classic Gold). Local news and shows were combined with networked programmes in each of its areas.

After the lifting on sanctions restricting the time spent playing music (so-called 'needle time') in 1988, GWR FM became more and more music-led, playing Top 40 chart music during the daytime, and specialist music (big band music, rock, rap etc.) was gradually phased out. The local element of the station, especially its news coverage, had progressively become briefer and reduced in length, then moved onto Brunel Classic Gold, before being dropped altogether. GWR FM at last become popular, with the rise in listening figures confirming this.

A Bath ILR licence was awarded by the IBA
Independent Broadcasting Authority
The Independent Broadcasting Authority was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television - and commercial/independent radio broadcasts...

 in 1986. GWR Radio Bath debuted on 22 May 1987, as a separate station, later known as Bath's GWR FM and Heart Bath. Although there was still some programming being shared from GWR Bristol, local output was put out during peak listening hours. However for official licensing purposes, GWR Bath and Bristol were listed as one station and audience figures from RAJAR
RAJAR
RAJAR was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the RadioCentre...

 were combined with GWR Swindon. All programming for Heart Bath were broadcast from Bristol, but there was a small 'GWR Bath' office in Avon Street at one time.

The Mix Network

In 1992, a re-launch of the station saw The New GWR-FM become the hub of what was The Mix Network, a network of radio stations owned by the GWR Group (formerly GCap Media
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. On 31 March 2008 the company agreed a takeover by...

) covering southern England and Wales. The radio station's (and the group's) long held philosophy of heavily researching the average person's listening habits and tastes led by group chairman Ralph Bernard created a tightly formatted sound where popular Top 40 chart hits ex-Top 40 songs are blended in with older hits. This led to a Better Music Mix format which spread to other radio stations within the GWR Group, including Essex FM, Trent FM and Beacon Radio creating a mini national network.

The practice for the Mix Network stations was for each station to play a centrally produced playlist (from GWR FM itself). Songs were broadcast at the same time as neighbouring group stations and each station adopted the Better Music Mix tagline, to be said by local disc jockeys in between songs. Fans of the previous guises of some stations bought by the GWR Group, notably Essex FM and Beacon Radio were unhappy at the sudden re-branding of the stations, accusing the new management of reducing local output such as news bulletins and replacing local programming with networked shows such as Late Night Love and The Request Fest, which originated from the Bristol studios.

Despite protests from outside Bristol, GWR FM continued to be popular with RAJAR listening figures showing an average 14% listening share of all radio broadcast in the area.

Licence renewal

In 2002 the Radio Authority renewed GWR FM's licence. It was due to expire in October 2009, but will now expire on 28 October 2013, according to GWR FM licensees page. However it is expected to be automatically renewed because it provides a DAB
Digital audio broadcasting
Digital Audio Broadcasting is a digital radio technology for broadcasting radio stations, used in several countries, particularly in Europe. As of 2006, approximately 1,000 stations worldwide broadcast in the DAB format....

 simulcast signal. This is the same scenario applies to its sister stations GWR FM Bath and Classic Gold 1260
Brunel Classic Gold
Gold is a regional AM station in the west of England.The station carries the Gold programming, except for a local 4-hour afternoon programme from 12pm to 4pm, which is different in the stations two sub-regions.-Programmes:* Breakfast...

.

Weston-super-Mare relay

In late 2007, GWR FM launched a relay of their Bristol service to the Weston-super-Mare area on 103.0 MHz FM, as for many years Weston had been officially covered by the station, but had suffered from a poor 96.3 MHz FM signal in many parts of the town. The programming on this relay was identical to the Bristol service, aside from jingles and sweepers that stated 'GWR Weston', and had separate advertisements for North Somerset
North Somerset
North Somerset is a unitary authority in England. Its area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare....

 listeners. This led to the somewhat confusing situation that although the station branding said 'GWR Weston', all DJ links reference 'GWR Bristol' and feature Bristol oriented news, event guides and competitions.

Ofcom yellow card

On 13 March 2009, Ofcom
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...

 issued GWR Bristol with a "yellow card" after a content sampling report showed that only 47% of GWR Bristol's music was from the past 2 years, much lower than its minimum 75%. Ofcom are now planning to monitor the station again soon after its rebrand to Heart.

Network restructuring

On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced plans to merge Heart Bristol with Heart Somerset and Heart Bath as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 to 16. The new station, Heart West Country
Heart West Country
Heart West Country is an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to Bristol and Somerset. The station began broadcasting on 16 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Bristol , Heart Bath and Heart Somerset .-History:The regional station originally broadcast as three separate stations...

, began broadcasting from Bristol on 16 July 2010.

Slogans

  • 1982 Radio West- "We got a good thing going"
  • 1985 GWR- "Listen, we're talking about you!"
  • 1989 GWR Radio "The West number one", "Good Music, Great Talk"
  • 1992 The New GWR FM- "No rap, less chat"
  • 1994 "A mix of the 70s, 80s and the best of today"
  • 1995 "A better music mix - from the 70s, 80s and today"
  • 1997 "Today's better music mix"
  • 2000 "Today's best mix, today's best variety" "More music, less talk" "From the world's best city"
  • 2005/6 "Good Music is Back"
  • 2007 "Today's Best Mix"
  • 2008 "More Music Variety"
  • 2009 "The Heart of Bristol"
  • 2009 "Heart is Coming"
  • 2009 "More Music Variety"

GWR acronym

The initials GWR have an association with the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...

 especially in the South West of England, and there is a popular misconception with listeners that the station stands for Great Western Radio. Indeed neighbouring GWR Wiltshire was called Wiltshire Radio (WR) before its merger with Radio West. However according to group management, the letters GWR did not stand for anything.

It should also be noted that GWR's oldies service was originally called Brunel Classic Gold, after the Great Western Railway's founding father Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...

.

GWR Group

The company which formerly owned GWR, the GWR Group, expanded from the late 1980s / early 1990s onwards to purchase other stations throughout the country. Many UK stations now follow the GWR format. It became the largest radio company in the UK, before merging with its competitor Capital Radio
Capital Radio
Capital London is a London based radio station which launched on 16 October 1973 and is owned by Global Radio. On 3 January 2011 it formed part of the nine station Capital radio network.- Pre-launch :...

 to become GCap Media
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. On 31 March 2008 the company agreed a takeover by...

 on 9 May 2005.

Past and previous management

  • Chairman: Stella Pirie

  • Programme Controller
  • 1994-1995: Steve Orchard (former GCap Media
    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. On 31 March 2008 the company agreed a takeover by...

     Local Operations Director)
  • 1995-1997: Dirk Anthony (former GCap Media
    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. On 31 March 2008 the company agreed a takeover by...

     Group Programme Director)
  • 1997-1998: Vaughan Hobbs
  • 1998-2000: Mark Beever
  • 2000–present: Paul Andrew

  • Managing Director
  • 2007–present: Steve Jones

Premises

  • 1982-2001: Watershed Centre, Canons Road, Bristol
  • 2001–present: Passage Street, Bristol (also houses Classic Gold 1260
    Brunel Classic Gold
    Gold is a regional AM station in the west of England.The station carries the Gold programming, except for a local 4-hour afternoon programme from 12pm to 4pm, which is different in the stations two sub-regions.-Programmes:* Breakfast...

    , Heart Bath and Chill)

See also

  • Heart Network
    Heart Network
    Heart is a radio network of 17 adult contemporary independent local radio stations in central & southern England and north Wales. Each station broadcasts local breakfast and drive time shows and simulcasts network programming at all other times...

  • Heart Bath
  • Heart Gloucestershire
  • Heart Wiltshire
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