Heart North Wales Coast
Heart North Wales Coast was an independent local radio station broadcast along the North Wales coast, and owned & operated by Global Radio.The station, which broadcast from studios in Colwyn Bay & latterly, Bangor and transmitted from Great Ormes Head, Llandudno, officially served an area stretching from Amlwch in the west to Holywell in the east, but could be heard as far away as Manchester and The Fylde.The station, along with the nearby Heart Wrexham and Heart Cymru were part of the Marcher Radio Group of radio stations, which were bought by the GWR Group . GCap put the Marcher Group stations up for sale in 2005, but in March 2006 the sale was called off.Coast 96.3 won a Gold Sony Award at the Sony Radio Awards 2006 for stations with a TSA of under 300,000.The first voices heard on Heart North Wales Coast were those of Carl Hughes and Mair Thomas with Heart Breakfast at 6am on 22nd June 2009.On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced plans to close Heart North Wales Coast and merge the station with Heart Cheshire and North East Wales and Heart Wirral as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 to 15. The new station, Heart North West and Wales, is now broadcast from Wrexham but the now-defunct North Wales Coast station retains an opt-out for Welsh language news bulletins and programming during early mornings.
