Heart London

Heart 106.2 is an Independent Local Radio station based in London that specializes in "variety" and is owned by Global Radio as part of the Heart Network.

On 25 June 2007 it was announced that Heart along with its sister stations The Arrow, Sky News Radio, LBC and Galaxy were to be sold for £170 million to Global Radio from Chrysalis Radio.^[1]

In addition to FM, the station is available on DAB digital radio in London, and across the UK on Sky Digital satellite, Freeview (England, Wales and Southern Scotland only), Tiscali TV and Virgin Media cable. The station is now also available on MXR regional DAB multiplexes in the North West, North East, the Severn Estuary and Yorkshire, as well as on Switch Digital in central Scotland, having replaced Heart Digital. Until April 2006, the station could also be listened to worldwide through its Internet stream. However, according to the website, the station has withdrawn this facility outside the UK due to licencing laws [1].

Heart is famous for its high-profile breakfast show, Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Harriet Scott, which is produced by Jamie Scott, Jonathan Pascoe and Poppy Lloyd. Heart Breakfast won Gold for Best Music Personality Show at The New York Festivals, 2007 and The Silver Entertainment Award at The Sony Radio Academy Awards, 2007.

Regular features include iPlay at 7.45 and The Generation Gap (where the kids play the grown-ups) at 8.35. Big name stars in the studio include Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Shirley Bassey, Kermit The Frog, Miss Piggy, Lionel Richie, Nicole Kidman and Will Smith.

Other shows include Club Classics every Friday and Saturday evening and the Time Tunnel, presented by I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! contestant and former Children's BBC presenter Toby Anstis.

The station's programme director is Adrian Stewart.

The first song to be played on Heart 106.2 was Something Got Me Started, by Simply Red.

The station uses RCS Master Control & Selector as its music playout system, with Ads handled by Genesys.

After playing almost 2 million songs during 13 years 2months and 21days on the 26th November 2008 at 1pm Heart 106.2 moved its studio centre from West London to Leicester Square. The last song to play whilst broadcasting from West London was Bob Marley - Could You Be Loved? and the first song played at Leicester Square was Never Knew Love Like This Before, by Stephanie Mills.

Heart 106.2 and the new Heart network have been heavily critised for being very repetitive and playing a small selection of music on their playlist & talking too much about reality tv & playing manufactured music & less real music.

RAJAR ratings published on 27 October 2005 showed that Heart 106.2 had overtaken 95.8 Capital FM as the most popular commercial radio station in London by both number of listeners and audience share for the first time in Capital FM's 32 year history.

On 26 October 2006, Heart regained the top spot in London from Magic 105.4 in terms of reach and share, from RAJAR's Q3 listening figures of 2006.

The station rebranded in September 2006, new dry and sung jingles state only "This is Heart" instead of London's Heart 106.2 as it was before. The jingles were produced by IQ Beats.

• Heart Network.
• 100.7 Heart FM (West Midlands).
• Heart 106 (East Midlands).
• Heart Digital (UK, DAB Radio Only).

• Heart 106.2 Official website