Heart Northants (formerly Northants 96) was a local commercial radio station serving Northamptonshire. The station broadcast on 96.6 FM from studios in Northampton town centre, via the transmitter located in the Kingsthorpe area. As of August 2011 the station merged with Heart Dunstable and Heart Bedford to become Heart Four Counties and now has its studios from Central Milton Keynes. It is owned and operated by Global Radio as a part of the Heart Network. History The start of commercial local radio in Northamptonshire Hereward Radio was the first Independent Local Radio franchise for the county, providing programmes for Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes and Rugby from 1 October 1984, using its former FM frequency of 102.8 MHz and 1557 kHz medium wave. The station launched at 1am, while disc jockey John Warwick hosted its morning show, Hereward Daybreak the following morning. Local radio frequencies on the FM band in the United Kingdom were expanded and re-organised to form 'sub-bands' (104–105 MHz were reserved for BBC Local Radio, whereas 96.1–97.7 MHz were attributed to Independent Local Radio). This affected Northamptonshire as follows: BBC Radio Northampton (96.6 FM) moved to 104.2 FM and 103.6 FM Northamptonshire ILR (102.8 FM) moved to 96.6 FM. Shortly afterwards, due to general difficulties within the commercial radio industry at the time Hereward withdrew from Northamptonshire and continued in Peterborough. In 1985, the Independent Broadcasting Authority assigned the Independent Local Radio franchise to a new company, Northants Radio Ltd, owned by Chiltern Radio Group. Northants 96 launched at 10.00 am on 30 November 1986 with announcer Tony West introducing the first regular programmes on the station. Following a synthesised alarm clock ticking saying: "Good Morning. 10am, Sunday 30 November 1986, and this is the new sound of radio in Northamptonshire- Northants 96!" followed by a station identification jingle and a welcome message from the then Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire and the first song to be played was "I Can Hear Music" by The Beach Boys. Notable disc jockeys on Northants included Northants' first breakfast show, future well-known hypnotist Paul McKenna and David Prever, who would later move to Wiltshire's GWR FM Its to be noted that Northants 96 and Northants Radio were interchangeable names for the station and relayed programmes on a mediumwave frequency – 1557 kHz, which opened on 25 June 1990. The Hot FM and SuperGold Northants 96 was essentially part of a regional collective of