Invicta Radio
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| City | Whitstable |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Kent |
| Branding | This is Heart |
| Slogan | Turn up the Feel Good! |
| Frequency | 95.9, 96.1, 97.0, 102.8 and 103.1 MHz, DAB |
| First air date | 1 October 1984 |
| Owner | Global |
| Website | www |
Heart Kent (previously Invicta FM) is a local radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to Kent from studios at John Wilson Business Park in Whitstable.
The station has been broadcasting for nearly 30 years, sequentially being owned by Southern Radio plc, Capital Radio plc and GCap Media plc.
The station went to air as Invicta Sound at 6am on 1 October 1984. The first few seconds of broadcasting were marred by a sound mix up which meant that Magnus's discussions with his production team were broadcast to the county.
The station output was described as "Radio 2 cum Radio 4", featuring a mix of middle-of-the-road music coupled with a prominent news schedule where a news bulletin would last at least nine minutes.
The managing director of the company Cecilia Garnett was sacked after the first few months.
The station was relaunched as Invicta Radio in spring 1985.
The company's studios were based in an old warehouse and later nightclub, The Works, at 15 Station Road East in Canterbury, with a second, smaller base at 37 Earl Street in Maidstone. Originally, presenters generally had the option of choosing where to present their show from, depending on where they lived. Plus, in the Invicta Sound days, there was some separate programming for East and West Kent, including dedicated Drivetime shows for each half of the county. Some specialist shows could only be heard by one half of the county, including a classical music show and a programme aimed at children, called "Kid's Stuff".
In 1985, a general reorganisation of radio frequencies in Britain forced Invicta into changing a number of them:
The lack of a single high-powered frequency for the east of the county was because of international frequency clearance problems due to the proximity to France across the English Channel. Instead three low-powered transmitters were installed in Ashford, Folkestone/Dover and Thanet. This problem did not affect BBC national and local radio, which use a single high-powered site at Swingate, near Dover.
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