City Salford Quays Branding This is Heart First air date 8 September 1998 | Broadcast area North West England Slogan Turn up the Feel Good! | |
 | ||
Frequency 105.4 MHz /
DAB: 11B Liverpool
12A Lancashire
11C Manchester | ||
Heart North West is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. The station broadcasts to North West England from studios at Exchange Quay, Salford.
Contents
Originally known as Century Radio and Century FM, and from 2009 Real Radio North West, the station relaunched as Heart North West on Tuesday 6 May 2014.
Century Radio
The station opened as Century Radio on 8 September 1998 as the second Century station in the country (the first being Gateshead-based 100-102 Century Radio). Owned and operated by Border Television, Century was founded by managing director John Myers, who had also established the north east station. Like the first station, Myers also presented the breakfast show under the pseudonym John Morgan.
The station's launch was the subject of an episode of a BBC Two fly-on-the-wall documentary Trouble at the Top, mainly following Myers. The episode, entitled "Degsy Rides Again", showed Myers' attempts to train lunchtime phone-in host Derek Hatton, a controversial local ex-politician who had never before presented on radio. Myers was not confident enough in Hatton for him to appear on pre-launch publicity, although his show "The Degsy Debate" performed well at the first RAJAR. Also amongst its launch presenters was controversial shock jock Scottie McClue.
The documentary also covered the station's acquisition of exclusive commentary rights for Manchester United F.C.'s games. They remained United's official radio partner for almost a decade until selling the rights to Xfm Manchester for the 2007–08 season.
Myers left the group to head GMG Radio, overseeing the launch of the similar Real Radio brand. Capital Radio bought the Century network, and was subsequently acquired by GCap Media. GMG Radio acquired the Century stations in October 2006, reuniting Myers and John Simons (programme director on the original Gateshead station) with the brand.
Real Radio
Century was re-branded as Real Radio on Monday 30 March 2009.
On 15 October 2012, Real Radio announced the station would increase its amount of networked programming. Weekday daytime shows from 10am - 4pm, presented by Darren Parks and Debbie Mac, were networked across all Real Radio stations on Monday 5 November 2012 with further networked shows introduced at the weekend.
Heart
On 25 June 2012 it was announced Global Radio (the owner of stations such as Capital and Heart) had bought GMG Radio. The former GMG stations, including Real Radio, continued to operate separately as 'Real and Smooth Limited' until 1 April 2014.
On 6 February 2014, Global Radio announced it would be rebranding all Real Radio stations as Heart. Real Radio North West began a gradual transition to the Heart branding on 24 March 2014 and phased out the Real Radio branding on Sunday 20 April 2014. On 1 May 2014, local programming moved from Laser House in Salford to nearby Exchange Quay, sharing facilities with sister stations Capital Manchester and XFM Manchester. The full relaunch as Heart North West took place at 6am on Tuesday 6 May 2014.
Programming
Local programming is produced and broadcast from Heart's Salford studios from 6-10am and 4-7pm on weekdays, 1-5pm on Saturdays and 12pm-4pm on Sundays. All networked programming originates from Global Radio's London headquarters, including the syndicated Vodafone Big Top 40 on Sunday afternoons.
The station's local presenters are Joel Ross and Lorna Bancroft (Heart Breakfast), Russ Morris (weekday drivetime) and Carl Spencer (weekend afternoons).
News
Heart North West broadcasts hourly regional news bulletins from 6am-7pm on weekdays and 6am-12pm at weekends - including two ten-minute weekday programmes, Heart Morning News at 6am and Heart Nightly News at 6.45pm - and headlines on the half hour during weekday breakfast and drivetime shows.
National news updates air hourly from Global's London headquarters at all other times. Global's Salford newsroom also produces news bulletins for Capital Manchester, Smooth North West and XS Manchester (owned by Communicorp).