The Breeze Basingstoke & North Hampshire was an

Independent Local Radio Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, and deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2 ...

station serving

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is a town in Hampshire, situated in south-central England across a valley at the source of the River Loddon on the western edge of the North Downs. It is the largest settlement in Hampshire without city status in the United King ...

and the surrounding area of North

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

until it was purchased in 2019 by

Bauer Radio Bauer Media Audio UK is a UK-based radio division of Bauer Media Group owning brands; Absolute Radio, Greatest Hits Radio, Jazz FM, Hits Radio, KISS, Planet Rock, Magic, Kerrang! Radio and Heat Radio. History In early 2008, German ma ...

and became part of

Greatest Hits Radio South Greatest Hits Radio South is a regional radio station broadcasting across the South of England, as part of Bauer Radio, Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio network. Coverage The seven local stations broadcast to Salisbury, Dorset, West Sussex, North Ha ...

in 2020.

History

Kestrel FM

The Basingstoke station launched on 18 May 1998 as Kestrel FM. The previous owners Milestone launched a free weekly local

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

, the

Basingstoke Observer The ''Basingstoke, Thatcham & Newbury Observer'' was a group of local free newspapers for the Basingstoke and surrounding areas of north Hampshire, and the towns of Thatcham and Newbury in Berkshire, England. It was published weekly, and was ava ...

, in association with Kestrel FM in 2000. In 2010, 107.6 Kestrel FM in Basingstoke was merged with

Delta FM Delta FM was an Independent Local Radio station, broadcasting to East Hampshire, South West Surrey and North West Sussex. The station provided local news, community information, and specialist music programming to the towns of Alton, Bordon, F ...

in Alton, Bordon, Haslemere and Petersfield. However, initially the old Delta FM frequencies had a separate Breakfast Show, hosted by Dave Trumper. Outside of weekday Breakfast the former Delta Radio frequencies shared with Kestrel FM 107.6. By 2011, even this practice seemed to have been discontinued, with all areas receiving programming from Basingstoke.

Celador takeover

Up until 2012, Kestrel FM was run by the Tindle Radio Group. The station was latterly taken over by

Celador CPL Productions (formerly Celador) is an independent television and radio production company run by Danielle Lux, Murray Boland and Janet Oakes. It was formed in the United Kingdom in 1981 as an independent television production company. It cr ...

and on 16 December 2012, rebranded as The Breeze. The station continued to broadcast programming from its Basingstoke studios, from where regional programming for the Thames Valley and local news bulletins originated. The East Hampshire frequencies were moved to the Southampton-based Breeze station and 107.6 to the Thames Valley station.

Closure

The Breeze was purchased by Bauer Media in 2019 along with many other radio stations. On 27 May 2020 it was announced that The Breeze would become

Greatest Hits Radio Greatest Hits Radio (GHR) is a classic hits radio network in the United Kingdom, owned and operated by Bauer Media Audio UK. It currently includes 18 local and regional radio stations operating over 50 FM and DAB licences in England, Scotl ...

from early September 2020. The station went through a transitional period where its playlist was changed over to the 70s, 80s and 90s era and jingles changed to reflect the station playing "greatest hits". The Breeze was finally rebranded to

at 6:00am on 1 September 2020.

References

External links