Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire (formerly Radio Wyvern) is a local commercial radio station owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Herefordshire and Worcestershire. As of December 2022, the station has a weekly audience of 65,000 listeners according to RAJAR. History Radio Wyvern originally went on-air on 4 October 1982. The original Wyvern name derived from the River Wye and River Severn, the rivers running through Hereford and Worcester respectively (the name was proposed in the 1970s for what would become the county of Hereford and Worcester). The initial presentation team consisted of Sammy Southall at Breakfast, Roy Leonard in the morning, Graham Hughes in the afternoon and rock shows, and Mike George at drivetime. Weekend presenters included Jeff Roberts, Rob Yarnold and Bob Lee. Managing Director from 1984 until 1996 was Norman Bilton who joined Wyvern from Two Counties Radio in Bournemouth and Metro Radio in Newcastle. The offices and studios were located in the former Hereford and Worcester County Council Education Department building at 5/6 Barbourne Terrace, north of Worcester city centre. The studio block was newly constructed at the rear of the main building, incorporating two identical on-air self-operated studios, using MBI desks, surrounding a central 'talks' studio. In accordance with the then IBA Code of Engineering Practice, the entrance to each studio was through a two-door "air-lock", ensuring high acoustic isolation. EMT 948 turntables, Studer B67 tape decks and Sonifex Micro-HS cartridge machines were used in these studios. From the first day, a split-transmission system for commercial breaks was provided (to play separate advertising breaks to Worcestershire and to Herefordshire), using secondary cue-tones to fire sequences of cartridges, but this was rarely, if ever, used on air. News was broadcast from one of the 'guest' microphone positions in the on-air studio, operated by the presenter not the newsreader. Other voice reports for news, or telephone interviews, were carried out in a "meat safe" style studio inside the newsroom. The Technical Director in charge of all equipment was Rob Yarnold. In its early days, the station opened at 6am (7am on Sundays) and closed at 8pm, before it extended broadcasting hours to 24 hours a day by joining up with Beacon Radio from 10pm and then a wider network of Midlands stations from 1am. Radio Wyvern took the SuperStation overnight service in the late 1980s, and when that closed