Capital Scotland (formerly known as Beat 106, XFM Scotland, and later Galaxy Scotland) is a regional

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

owned by Communicorp UK and operated by

Global Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

. It broadcasts to

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

Central Belt The Central Belt of Scotland is the area of highest population density within Scotland. Depending on the definition used, it has a population of between 2.4 and 4.2 million (the country's total was around 5.4 million in 2019), including Great ...

, an area surrounding the two cities of

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated pop ...

and

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

History

Beat 106

Beat 106 was established by the Big Beat Group, headed up by a group of

nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...

promoters from

, and first aired on 19 November 1999 as a new rock and dance station. Notable presenters at launch included

Graham Stewart Graham Stewart (born 1975 in Perth, Scotland) is a Scottish radio and television broadcaster who currently presents Reporting Scotland for BBC Scotland. He has previously presented on BBC Radio Scotland, Radio Clyde and on various Edinburgh ...

and Jim Gellatly. After being sold to Capital Radio Group in July 2000 it switched towards playing more dance music, later changing back to a more rock/dance format. In 2005 Capital Radio merged with the

GWR Group GCap Media was a British commercial radio company formed from the merger of the Capital Radio Group and GWR Group. The merger was completed in May 2005. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. O ...

to form

GCap Media GCap Media was a British commercial radio company formed from the merger of the Capital Radio Group and GWR Group. The merger was completed in May 2005. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. ...

, creating the UK's largest commercial radio group. Beat 106 closed on 1 January 2006.

XFM Scotland

The rebranding of Beat 106 to XFM was one of a number of measures announced by GCap to improve their corporate performance following the merger. The original XFM station was XFM London and the rebranding in Scotland occurred four months before the expected launch of XFM Manchester. XFM Scotland programmes were launched by breakfast presenter Dominik Diamond on 4 January 2006 with ''Loaded'' by Primal Scream as the first song played on the relaunched station. A major marketing campaign was launched a year later in a bid to try to regain lost listeners since the rebrand. By September 2007, the station was only reaching audience shares of 2.6% in the West and 4.1% in the East. On 11 February 2008

announced that they would be selling the analogue licence for the station. GCap later became part of

Global Radio Global Media & Entertainment Limited, trading as Global, is a British media company formed in 2007. It is the owner of the largest commercial radio company in Europe having expanded through a number of historical acquisitions, including Chrys ...

and it was decided to keep the licence. On 28 August 2008, Jim Gellatly announced that his last show would be broadcast that day and he would be leaving the station together with a number of colleagues. By the time of XFM's rebrand as Galaxy, station audience shares had fallen further to 2.4% in the West and 2.6% in the East.

Galaxy Scotland

On 27 August 2008 new owners

announced they would re-brand XFM Scotland as Galaxy Scotland. The rebrand was part of Global Radio's major strategy to expand the brand across outside

and into parts of England. Local programming on the station consisted of daily breakfast, weekday drivetime and specialist shows with networked programming broadcast from Leeds. Galaxy Scotland joined the

Galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

network on 7 November 2008. XFM closed at approximately 3.30pm that day, followed immediately by a 15-minute launch sequence for Galaxy. Galaxy programming started by 4pm the same afternoon, with Gary Spence as the first voice on the air, followed by a special evening show with networked presenter Dave Kelly. From its launch, Galaxy Scotland gained 429,000 listeners providing almost 3.2 million listening hours per week. In the 12 months up to May 2010, the station doubled its number of listeners. As of Monday 12 July 2010, Galaxy Scotland changed their tagline from "Love Music" to "Scotland's No 1 Hit Music Station" in line with the other Galaxy stations across the UK.

Capital Scotland

The station was re-branded as Capital Scotland on 3 January 2011 as part of a merger of Global's

and

Hit Music ''Hit Music'' was a weekly British chart newsletter; sister publication to '' Music Week''. ''Hit Music'' existed for almost nine years, supplying the official UK music charts (as compiled by Gallup and later OCC/CIN). The founding editors were ...

networks to form the nine-station Capital network. Local breakfast and drivetime output was retained with most networked programming now broadcast from the network's London studios. The station also produced a networked dance music show on Saturday overnights, which was networked across the Capital network until July 2012. On 1 July 2011, Global requested to change the formats of Capital Birmingham and Capital Scotland which have obligations from previous owners, enabling all nine Capital stations to fall inline. The two format change requests were approved in November. On 6 February 2014, Global announced it would be selling Capital Scotland to Communicorp. Capital's network programming and brand name remain in use under contract with Global. On 26 February 2019, Global confirmed the station's local breakfast and weekend shows would be replaced with networked programming from April 2019. The weekday Drivetime show was retained alongside news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising. Four of Capital Scotland's five local presenters left the station with only Drivetime presenter Garry Spence retained. Since 2020, Capital Scotland drivetime has been hosted b
Katy J
(Katy Johnston).

Programming

All networked programming originates from Global's London headquarters, including '' Capital Breakfast'' with

Roman Kemp Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

. Local programming is produced and broadcast from Global's Glasgow studios from 4-7pm on weekdays presented by Katy Johnsto
(Katy J).

News

Global's Newsroom broadcasts hourly regional news updates from 5am-7pm on weekdays and 8am-12pm at weekends with headlines on the half-hour during ''Capital Breakfast'' on weekdays. The bulletins are produced for Communicorp by Global's Glasgow newsroom, which also produces bulletins for Heart Scotland and Smooth Scotland.Capital FM – Scotland public file
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Former notable presenters

* Sacha Brooks * Des Clarke ( Heart Scotland) * Dominik Diamond * David Dunne * Andi Durrant ( Kiss Fresh) * Jim Gellatly ( BFBS Radio) *

Jo Good Jo Good is a British broadcaster. Career A radio 'anorak' since her early teens, Jo joined the radio industry straight out of school, aged 17. At this point she moved from Alnwick, Northumberland to Manchester. Working first as a travel reporte ...

* Stephanie Hirst (

Hits Radio Hits Radio is a network of 25 contemporary hit radio stations in the United Kingdom, owned and operated by Bauer Media Audio UK. As of October 2022, the network has a combined reach of 6.6 million weekly listeners according to RAJAR. Overvi ...

) *Dave Kelly (

) *

John Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

* Adele Roberts (

BBC Radio 1 BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, ...

) * Julyan Sinclair * Steve Sutherland * Fraser Thomson (

Pure Radio Scotland Robin Galloway (born 18 December 1961) is a Scottish radio and TV broadcaster currently on air at Pure Radio Scotland as breakfast host. Robin hosts the Robin Galloway Breakfast Show on Pure Radio weekday mornings from 06:00 and is also Group ...

) *

Margherita Taylor Margherita Taylor (born 26 April 1972) is an English TV and radio presenter. She is a freelancer with Global Group and currently presents on stations Smooth Radio and Classic FM. Taylor studied media and communications at the University o ...

( Classic FM &

Smooth London Smooth London is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global as part of the Smooth Radio network. It broadcasts to the Greater London area from Croydon transmitting station on 102.2 MHz. It broadcasts a soft adult contemporary radi ...

) *

Tiësto Tijs Michiel Verwest (; born 17 January 1969), known professionally as Tiësto ( ), is a Dutch DJ and music producer from Breda. He was voted "the Greatest DJ of All Time" by ''Mix'' magazine in a 2010/2011 poll amongst fans. In 2013, he was vo ...

* Matt Wilkinson (

Heart The heart is a muscular organ found in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon diox ...

) * Tom Wilson (deceased)

References

External links

Capital Scotland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capital Scotland

Communicorp Radio stations established in 1999 Radio stations in Edinburgh Radio stations in Glasgow 1999 establishments in Scotland