Northants 96
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| City | Northampton |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Northamptonshire |
| Branding | Heart |
| Slogan | More music variety |
| Frequency | 96.6 MHz RDS: HEART___ |
| First air date | 30 November 1986 |
| Format | Hot AC |
| Owner | Global Radio |
| Website | Station website |
Coordinates: 52°14′23″N 0°53′12″W / 52.2398°N 0.88662°W
Heart Northants (formerly Northants 96) was a local commercial radio station serving Northamptonshire.
The station broadcast on 96.6 FM from studios in Northampton town centre, via the transmitter located in the Kingsthorpe area. As of August 2011 the station merged with Heart Dunstable and Heart Bedford to become Heart Four Counties and now has its studios from Central Milton Keynes. It is owned and operated by Global Radio as a part of the Heart Network.
Hereward Radio was the first Independent Local Radio franchise for the county, providing programmes for Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes and Rugby from the 1 October 1984, using its former FM frequency of 102.8 MHz and 1557 kHz medium wave. The station launched at 01:00, while disc jockey John Warwick hosted its morning show, Hereward Daybreak the following morning.
Local radio frequencies on the FM band in the United Kingdom were expanded and re-organised to form 'sub-bands' (104-105 MHz were reserved for BBC Local Radio, whereas 96.1-97.7 MHz were attributed to Independent Local Radio). This affected Northamptonshire as follows:
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