Hertford's independent local radio station went on the air at 9:00am on Saturday 3rd March 2001.

Stephen Folland in Studio One

Transmitting on 106.7MHz and 106.9MHz, the station can be heard as far away as St.Albans, Harlow, Hitchin, Buntingford and Broxbourne.

A weekend of special programmes kicked-off with an hour long show presented by Robbie Owen, who hosted the Breakfast Show during HertBeat's trial broadcast. Robbie, who was educated at Richard Hale School, is also the station's Vice-Chairman.

Since winning it's licence last March, over £250,000 has been spent setting up the staton, which is based at The Pump House Studios in Knebworth Park. The conversion work to transfom the derelict building into a radio studio was completed in October last year by The Knebworth Trust and since then HertBeat have been equipping the studios with the most up to date technology.

Station Director Lester Cowling in Studio Two

The station has a full-time staff of 8, together with 3 part-time personnel and over 20 freelancers. Vice-Chairman Robbie Owen, who lives in Bengeo, has been active in local radio for many years and has worked tirelessly over the last decade to establish a local radio station for Hertford. The Station Director, Lester Cowling, was chairman and Chief Executive of KCBC, a local station in Kettering that he established in 1989.

The sales team at HertBeat is led by Sue Roscoe, who worked as Station Director at Oasis FM in St.Albans and 1017FM in Harlow.

HertBeat's programming is aimed at 25-54 year-olds and projected figures anticipate an audience of 31,000 people a week. The daytime schedule will presented by Richard Saw, Stephen Folland, Sarah Champion and Chris Bradley, all of whom live locally, as does Russell Osbourne, who presents a local CD album chart show in the evenings. Local news content will consist of on-the-spot reports from The HertBeat Hound, Chris Bradley, who will be out and about in the radio car; and regular local news written and presented by Ruth Gibbon. National news will be provided by IRN

The station's output will consist of music from the past two decades and quality speech. There will be local news and traffic reports, together with features on local sport, entertainment and business. In addition, HertBeat will be supplementing their broadcasting activities with a website at www.hertbeat.com.

High technology in use

HertBeat FM is amongst a small number of independently run local stations in the country and is almost unique in that it has a transmitter mast on the same site as the studios. Recent months have seen some of the most up to date equipment installed at the Pump House Studios, making it one of the most advanced local radio studio complexes in the country.

To see The Radio Authorities' assessment of HertBeat's application click here.