Spire FM was a UK radio station based in
Salisbury,
Wiltshire. It was awarded the licence to broadcast to Salisbury and the surrounding areas by the Radio Authority, now
Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
, in 1991. The station took its name from the spire of
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England. The cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese of Salisbury and is the seat of the Bishop of Salisbury.
The buildi ...
.
After several changes of ownership, it was rolled up into
Greatest Hits Radio in September 2020, ceasing local programming.
History
The station was fully launched on 20 September 1992 (the licence ran from the 5th, when test transmissions began to include programmes about the Salisbury Arts Festival). Spire FM broadcast from City Hall Studios in Malthouse Lane, Salisbury, part of the City Hall entertainment venue.
Originally independently owned, it was acquired by Radio Investments Limited in 1995, and from 1996 the station was owned by
The Local Radio Company, which was a joint venture with
GWR Group until it was converted into an AIM-quoted company in 2004. TLRC was acquired by
UKRD Group in 2009, and
Bauer Radio bought UKRD's ten stations in 2019.
Spire FM won a prestigious
Sony Radio Award for Station of the Year in 1994 and the runner-up award in 2003. Other awards included the KPMG Marketing Excellence Award, and Wiltshire Business of the Year finalists.
Bauer Media rebranded the station as Greatest Hits Radio Salisbury in September 2020, as part of their national
Greatest Hits Radio network. It now broadcasts national and regional music programmes with local news bulletins.
Programming
All programming on the station was locally produced. Until 2018, Spire FM broadcast
The Vodafone Big Top 40 chart show (previously
The Pepsi Chart and
Hit40UK) which was produced from
Capital FM
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capitals, List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the dura ...
in London and syndicated across over 140 commercial radio stations in the UK. However, the show was withdrawn from syndication in 2018 and now broadcasts solely on
Heart and
Capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
stations.
References
Bauer Radio
Radio stations in Wiltshire
Salisbury
Radio stations established in 1992
Radio stations disestablished in 2020
Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom
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