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Business News Media
OfCom green lights switch from Heart to Capital in North Wales
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 5 March 2014
UK radio giant Global has been given the all clear from media regulator OfCom to rebrand its Heart stations in North Wales and West Cheshire as Capital FM, even though there clearly aren’t any capital cities in the region. Someone really ought to buy Team OfCom a dictionary.
Global needs to make the change because it plans to rebrand the Welsh frequencies of the Real Radio network it acquired off GMG Radio as Heart Wales, and it doesn’t want two outposts of the same station in the north of the country. Switching the two FM frequencies currently used by Heart in the area over to Global’s now quasi-national Capital network required a slight tweak to the terms of the OfCom licence that control the channels, basically to allow more chart music into the playlist.
OfCom said that the impact of the licence tweak would be “limited”, except, of course, Capital is quite a different station to Heart. Though given these two FM slots were originally home to the more Capital-style local radio service Marcher FM, it’s sort of a return to form for the frequencies.
Though, of course, the happy hey-day of commercial radio in the region, with that fabulous weekly pop news slot that went out each Sunday in 1992, can never be restored. Because its presenter is now too busy writing this nonsense.
