Heart 96.3 (formerly GWR FM Bristol) is a radio station serving Bristol and surrounding areas and broadcasting on 96.3 MHz in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare. Launched in 1981 as Radio West, it was merged with neighbouring Wiltshire Radio and relaunched under the name GWR in 1985, retaining the name through several changes of ownership until rebranding in March 2009. Heart Bristol merged with sister stations in Somerset and Bath to form Heart West Country. History Radio West Radio West began broadcasting on Tuesday 27 October 1981, eleven years after the region's first local radio station BBC Radio Bristol launched. The station started a full service commercial radio station on 96.3 MHz FM and 1260 kHz AM (238 metres medium wave) – the culmination of a merger between two companies bidding for the Bristol and Bath radio licence (Radio Avonside and Bristol Channel) awarded by the then Independent Broadcasting Authority. The choice of on-air name proved to be simple when the BBC aired a series called Shoestring complete with the fictitious Radio West. Headquartered in expensive studio premises in the Watershed complex on Bristol's Harbourside, by 1983 the station had suffered losses of £300,000. The original senior management team left the station, with John Bradford moving from Radio Tees to take over as managing director and news editor Mike Stewart appointed programme controller. This resulted in considerable changes to the programme output and presentation line-up, including Roger Day (ex Caroline, Piccadilly, and BRMB) being brought in to host the breakfast show. By October 1983, the station was closing each evening at 7:30pm, but as the station became more mainstream, it was able to broadcast throughout the evening and also late night by the end of the following year. Although the station was broadcasting programmes of a high quality (including award-nominated computer show Datarama), listeners remained loyal to the BBC's Radio Bristol, already established as the radio station for the area. Financially, commercial radio struggled to make any money as the 1980s economy in Britain was hampered by union strikes. Radio West had not made any profit since it started and looked set to close, when the neighbouring local station Wiltshire Radio, based in Swindon made an approach to merge the two stations, creating a station covering from Weston-super-Mare in the west to Swindon and Hungerford in the east, with opt out programming for the two areas. This merger was approved by the