the 1960s london pirate station see radio invicta london pirate station . for the 1960s whitstable offshore pirate station see radio 390 . heart kent city whitstable broadcast area kent branding this is heart slogan more music variety frequency 95.9 96.1 97.0 102.8 and 103.1 mhz dab first air date 1 october 1984 audience share 9.5 % december 2012 1 owner global radio website www.heartkent.co.uk heart kent previously invicta fm is a local radio station owned and operated by global radio as part of the heart network . it broadcasts to kent from studios at john wilson business park in whitstable . the station has been broadcasting for nearly 30 years sequentially being owned by southern radio plc capital radio plc and gcap media plc. contents 1 history 1.1 invicta in the 80s 1.2 station split the early years 1.3 invicta in the 90s 1.4 station split the later years 1.5 invicta in the 00s 1.6 heart is coming 2009 1.7 breakfast shows over the years 2 programming 2.1 heart news 3 notable current presenters 4 notable former presenters 4.1 local presenters 4.2 networked presenters 4.3 news and sports staff 5 references 6 external links history edit invicta in the 80s edit the station went to air as invicta sound at 6am on 1 october 1984 . the first few seconds of broadcasting were marred by a sound mix up which meant that magnus s discussions with his production team were broadcast to the county . the station output was described as radio 2 cum radio 4 featuring a mix of middle of the road music coupled with a prominent news schedule where a news bulletin would last at least nine minutes . 1 the managing director of the company cecilia garnett was sacked after the first few months . citation needed the station was relaunched as invicta radio in spring 1985 . the company s studios were based in an old warehouse and later nightclub the works at 15 station road east in canterbury with a second smaller base at 37 earl street in maidstone . originally presenters generally had the option of choosing where to present their show from depending on where they lived . plus in the invicta sound days there was some separate programming for east and west kent including dedicated drivetime shows for each half of the county . some specialist shows could only be heard by one half of the county including a classical music show and a programme aimed at children called kid s stuff . in 1985 a general reorganisation of radio frequencies in britain forced invicta into changing a number of them 103.8 mhz west kent became 103.1 mhz 95.1 mhz east kent became 102.8 mhz 96.3 mhz ashford became 96.1 mhz 95.9 mhz thanet and 97.0 mhz folkestone and dover remained unchanged . the lack of a single high powered frequency for the east of the county was because of international frequency clearance problems due to the proximity to france across the english channel . instead three low powered transmitters were installed in ashford folkestone dover and thanet . this problem did not affect bbc national and local radio which use a single high powered site at swingate near dover . 2 a few years after the rebranding of the station to invicta radio the station became known as invicta fm . soon after separate breakfast shows started to be broadcast to the following areas east kent west kent from 15 station road east canterbury and later from whitstable ashford initially from the ashford international hotel ashford then from canterbury and later from whitstable thanet from 15 station road east canterbury and later from whitstable station split the early years edit as required by the home office to end simulcasting on fm and am in march 1989 invicta radio became invicta fm and a sister station coast am began broadcasting on invicta s am frequencies . whilst the company name remained invicta sound plc the expanding operation started to become known as the invicta radio group . coast am was an aor soft rock station under the leadership of ex capital producer dj kerry juby with music programmed by paul stafford head of music and living on rock presenter 7 11pm weekdays . eammon kelly was the station s first breakfast host . a few months after the launch coast am was renamed coast classics . although the jingles sang coast classic . the service began playing more oldies and by 1990 it became a fully fledged golden oldies station . throughout this period coast was a 24 hour live local station but in 1991 it started taking a sustaining service from chiltern radio group s expanding am gold service supergold . as a result of this change the station was renamed invicta supergold . this helped as research had shown that listeners never fully got used to the station s name many still calling it invicta . a near identical set of jingles from jam were re sung with the station s new name and there were no major schedule changes . however just before this change took place and for most of summer 1991 presenters at the station were instructed to call the station coast classics invicta supergold on air to enable listeners to get used to the change . it became a highly popular station and once achieved a 17 % reach in a jicrar survey ; some say much to the disgust of its southern radio bosses who it has been said preferred their am stations to hover around the 9 % mark . it too lost its identity in 1998 when it become capital gold . as invicta supergold the station performed very well and became home to ex invicta fm presenters such as ex breakfast presenter johnny lewis . invicta in the 90s edit in 1991 controversy was sparked as one of the famous djs chris ryder aka caesar the boogieman was sacked over criminal charges related to theft from charity . he was ultimately found not guilty on these charges but was convicted of intent to defraud 3 also in 1991 the maidstone studios and offices closed and a few months later the entire company moved to a brand new larger building just outside whitstable . this was due to the company getting too big for its canterbury home having started to expand its radio operations beyond kent . by now it had acquired a radio station in frinton essex called mellow 1557 now known as dream 100 as well as a stake in a radio station in boulogne sur mer france which it had relaunched as continental invicta fm . some of invicta fm s jingles were resung as continental fm and voice overs appeared on the station by invicta presenter tim stewart . shortly after moving to its current base the station was acquired by southern radio plc which in turn was acquired by capital radio plc in may 1994 . mellow 1557 was sold by southern radio plc a few months after it took control of the invicta radio group . new rival commercial stations in the late 1990s were awarded licences in kent by the radio authority . these were tlr thanet medway fm medway towns neptune radio shepway and dover ctfm canterbury and district and kfm tonbridge and sevenoaks . these new stations mainly adopted a much larger playlist of songs and despite some major audiences successes mainly thanet they gradually put extra pressure on invicta s advertising revenue . most of the stations also employed many familiar ex invicta presenters . these stations are all now known as kmfm following buyouts by the km group . station split the later years edit see also capital gold when chiltern closed its supergold sustaining service invicta fm and invicta supergold began sharing a single programme overnight . it retained its own separate identity by the use of split fm am jingles and an hourly out of news separate pre recorded weather forecast read over the respective station s weather jingle . however the presenter simply called it invicta elsewhere in the hour . this usually ran from midnight or 1am until 6am although the later launch of an early breakfast programme on invicta fm meant the overnight presenter would do the last hour on supergold only . invicta supergold closed down may 1998 to be replaced by the mainly networked capital gold . the change happened with no promotion save for a handful of promos scheduled to run over the weekend prior to the monday launch . a local drivetime show was retained presented initially by mike peters then peter fielding . this was ahead of the roll out of capital gold across other am stations owned by the company ; the kent site acted as a test station chosen in part because of its close proximity to capital gold in london to ensure syndication worked and to iron out any problems . another change that occurred at the launch of capital gold in kent is that for the first time advertising was no longer split with different ads in the east and west of the county as had been the case since 1984 all ads now broadcast on the station are heard on both of the station s frequencies . by september capital gold could also be heard in birmingham sussex hampshire and not long after south wales . a while later the decision was taken to network the drivetime show presented by tony blackburn and instead local breakfast shows would be broadcast on each of the local capital gold services . kent s local opt out show was then presented by tim stewart who moved over from invicta fm . ex radio 1 dj adrian john took over the kent breakfast show in 2000 . a local breakfast show survived until august 2007 when capital gold owners gcap media purchased the classic gold stations from ubc . ofcom agreed a proposal to move the four hour local opt out from breakfast to afternoons . kent s breakfast show host by now was neil winfield who left the station and ex invicta jock russ lowe came in to present the 12 4 slot on weekdays . it was and remains pre recorded voicetracked and music heavy . as it is recorded especially for the kent audience of the now renamed gold ; station it is able to include occasional kent information and other references to the county . local news and travel remains in the breakfast and drivetime programmes and local commercials are broadcast 24 hours a day . all other output is produced at the gold studios at leicester square in london . invicta in the 00s edit capital radio plc and gwr group plc merged in 2005 and on 1 may that year the newly enlarged group was renamed gcap media plc. the first effects of the gcap merger were felt by invicta fm soon afterwards . new boss craig boddy assisted by gcap management hugh murray and regional programme boss peter sinclair undertook a radical restructure of the station in september 2005 in response to falling listening figures and mounting overheads . boddy changed invicta from the style influenced by nearby capital fm to one which roughly resembled the old mix network . invicta was possibly the last local radio station owned by the company outside london to be live and local 24 7 escaping overnight networking and voicetracking at times when capital radio owned stablemates like ocean southern and power succumbed to one or the other . excluding the short lived steve penk late night show heard across the capital fm network a sunday afternoon show presented by cat deeley and edith bowman and the weekly chart show currently known as the big top 40 show the new relaunched invicta carried the first of the gwr straplines the best mix of the 80s 90s