Under relaxed OFCOM requirements for local content on commercial radio, Heart East is permitted to share all programmes between ten licences located in the
ITV Anglia broadcast region. Previously, these licences broadcast separate stations: • The first
Independent Local Radio station to launch in the region was
Radio Orwell in October 1975, broadcasting from
Ipswich and serving
Suffolk and north
Essex. Orwell's owners,
Suffolk Group Radio, went onto launch a separate station for west Suffolk, Saxon Radio, from
Bury St Edmonds in November 1982. The two Suffolk stations were merged in 1992 to form SGR FM. •
Hereward Radio began broadcasting from
Peterborough in July 1980, serving
Cambridgeshire, south
Lincolnshire and west
Norfolk. From October 1984, Hereward began serving Northamptonshire, but due to financial difficulties, the station withdrew from the county and the IBA readvertised the licence separately. •
Essex Radio began broadcasting in September 1981, initially from
Southend-on-Sea before moving to
Chelmsford in 2004. •
97.6 Chiltern FM began broadcasting from
Dunstable in October 1981, serving north west and central
Hertfordshire, south
Bedfordshire and east
Buckinghamshire. •
96.9 Chiltern FM began broadcasting from
Bedford in June 1982, serving north
Bedfordshire, north
Hertfordshire and west
Cambridgeshire. •
Radio Broadland began broadcasting from
Norwich in October 1984, serving
Norfolk and north
Suffolk. •
Northants 96 began broadcasting from
Northampton in November 1986, serving
Northamptonshire. •
Q103 began broadcasting from
Cambridge in February 1989, covering the Cambridge,
Newmarket and
Haverhill areas. •
Horizon Radio began broadcasting from
Milton Keynes in October 1989, serving north
Buckinghamshire. •
Ten-17 began broadcasting from
Harlow in May 1993, serving east
Hertfordshire and west
Essex. Initially reliant on Essex FM for most of its output, it later expanded into a self-sustaining service. It was briefly known as Mercury 101.7 before reverting to Ten-17, after being brought by GWR. •
SGR Colchester began broadcasting from
Colchester in October 1993, providing a split opt-out service for the area from its sister station in Suffolk. By the early 1990s, these stations fell into the ownership of four regional radio groups, namely
Chiltern Radio Network, the Essex FM Group,
East Anglian Radio and
Mid-Anglia Radio. Eventually, all four of these groups were brought by the
GWR Group (later GCap Media), which was taken over by Global in 2008. In 2009, nine of the stations were rebranded as part of the rollout of the Heart network across 29 local radio stations owned by Global. Hereward FM, Northants 96, Q103, Radio Broadland, Horizon Radio and SGR relaunched in January, followed by Essex FM in June. By this point, local programming had been reduced to ten hours on weekdays and four hours at weekends. The exception was Ten-17, which was part of a separate
Hit Music Network, combining its local output from Harlow with networked programming from Nottingham. During the summer of 2010, Global merged the ten stations in the east of England to four - with Ten-17 closing and joining the Heart network as a result: •
Heart Cambridgeshire - formed from the Peterborough and Cambridgeshire stations, broadcasting from Cambridge •
Heart East Anglia - formed from the Norfolk and Suffolk stations, broadcasting from Norwich •
Heart Essex - formed from Ten-17 in Harlow and Heart's stations in Chelmsford & Southend and Colchester, broadcasting from Chelmsford •
Heart Four Counties - formed from the Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes, Dunstable and Bedford stations, broadcasting from Dunstable Local programming was further cut to seven hours on weekdays, although localised news bulletins, bumpers (ex. "Across Milton Keynes" was announced on 103.3, whilst similar bumpers were used on other transmitters), traffic updates and advertising continued to air as opt-outs. The Cambridgeshire and Four Counties stations latterly moved from Peterborough and Dunstable to Cambridge and Milton Keynes respectively. On 26 February 2019, following OFCOM's decision to relax local content obligations from commercial radio, Global announced it would merge the four Heart stations into one. As of June 2019, regional programming consists of a three-hour Drivetime show on weekdays, alongside localised opt-outs for news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising. Local breakfast and weekend shows were replaced with network programming from London. Global's studio centres in
Cambridge,
Chelmsford and
Norwich were closed, although local newsgathering and sales staff were retained. As of 24 February 2025, all programming originates from Global's London headquarters, including
Heart Drive, presented each weekday by
JK and
Kelly Brook. ==News==