Scottish Radio Holdings

Last updated February 21, 2019

Scottish Radio Holdings (SRH) was a Scottish media company which owned 22 radio stations, and around 30 local newspapers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain, with a border with England to the southeast, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast, the Irish Sea to the south, and more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

Newspaper scheduled publication containing news of events, articles, features, editorials, and advertising

A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events.

History

SRH had its origins in the 1970s when Glasgow was awarded the third licence for a commercial station in the UK. As a result in 1973 Radio Clyde began broadcasting. Unlike the two existing commercial stations (both in London), Radio Clyde was an immediate success. This was helped in part by strong financial backers that included Sean Connery and Jackie Stewart.

Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, and the third most populous city in the United Kingdom, as of the 2017 estimated city population of 621,020. Historically part of Lanarkshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland; the local authority is Glasgow City Council. Glasgow is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as "Glaswegians" or "Weegies". It is the fourth most visited city in the UK. Glasgow is also known for the Glasgow patter, a distinct dialect of the Scots language that is noted for being difficult to understand by those from outside the city.

Radio Clyde is a group of two Independent Local Radio stations serving Glasgow and West Central Scotland. Radio Clyde is owned and operated by Bauer Radio, based at studios in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire and forms part of Bauer's City network of local stations.

Sean Connery Scottish actor and producer

Sir Thomas Sean Connery, KBE is a retired Scottish actor and producer, who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.

In 1991 laws controlling the ownership of commercial stations were relaxed. Clyde merged with Radio Forth to form SRH and immediately floated on the London Stock Exchange.

Radio Forth is a group of three Independent Local Radio stations serving Lothian and Fife. Radio Forth is owned and operated by Bauer Radio, based at studios in Edinburgh and forms part of Bauer's City network of local stations.

London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London, England. As of April 2018, London Stock Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$4.59 trillion. It was founded in 1571, making it one of the oldest exchanges in the world. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. It is part of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

In 1995 it acquired Morton Newspapers which owned around 20 newspapers in Northern Ireland. Since then SRH expanded operations by acquiring further publications in Scotland and Ireland.^[1]

Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the UK's population. Established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the British government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in some areas, and the Agreement granted the Republic the ability to "put forward views and proposals" with "determined efforts to resolve disagreements between the two governments".

Ireland, also known as the Republic of Ireland, is a country in north-western Europe occupying 26 of 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, which is located on the eastern part of the island, and whose metropolitan area is home to around a third of the country's over 4.8 million inhabitants. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, Saint George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann, an upper house, Seanad Éireann, and an elected President who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach, who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the Taoiseach in turn appoints other government ministers.

SRH had a network of 22 stations when it was acquired by rival media group Emap on 21 June 2005.^[2] The newspaper titles published by SRH, collectively known as Score Press, was sold to Johnston Press for £155 million.^[3] The group's newspaper interests were sold off as were the firm's radio operations in Ireland. SRH's UK radio operations were integrated into those of Emap with the two SRH-owned Vibe FM stations becoming Kiss 101 and Kiss 105-108. The group's FM stations in Scotland formed a local version of the Big City Network which Emap were already operating in England. Emap also took on SRH's AM stations in Scotland, Wave 105 on England's south coast, and two stations in Northern Ireland from SRH.

Johnston Press plc, was a multimedia company founded in Falkirk, Scotland in 1767. Its flagship titles included UK-national newspaper the i, The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post, the Falkirk Herald, and Belfast's The News Letter. The company was operating around 200 newspapers and associated websites around the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man when it went into administration in 2018. The Falkirk Herald was the company's first acquisition in 1846. Johnston Press's assets were transferred to JPIMedia in 2018, who continued to publish its titles.

Kiss 101 is a radio station in Bristol, England broadcasting to South Wales and the West of England, playing pop, dance, hip hop, urban, R&B and electronic music. It now forms part of a national Kiss network, which also includes Kiss 105-108 and Kiss 100 (London) and is owned by Bauer Radio.

Kiss 105-108 is East Anglia's radio station, playing predominantly dance, hip hop, electronic, urban and R'n'B music across Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and North Essex. It has been known as Vibe 105-108, Vibe FM and briefly Non-Stop Vibe which ran successfully from 22 November 1997 until relaunch on 6 September 2006 as part of the Kiss network, alongside sister stations Vibe 101 in Bristol and Kiss 100, London.

In December 2007, Emap announced that their consumer media interests including radio stations would be sold to Hamburg based Bauer Media Group.^[4]

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany with a population of over 1.8 million.

Bauer Media Group is a European-based media company, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, that manages a portfolio of more than 600 magazines, over 400 digital products and 50 radio and TV stations around the world. The portfolio includes print shops, postal, distribution and marketing services. Bauer Media Group has a workforce of approximately 11,000 employees in 17 countries.

Related Research Articles

Kiss is a UK radio station which broadcasts nationally on DAB Digital Radio, as well as on FM in London, Bristol and the Severn Estuary, and East Anglia. Kiss specialises in hip hop, R&B, urban, house, and electronic dance music. It is notable for having originally started out as Kiss FM - a 1980s pirate radio station that was to become the UKs first legal radio station specialising in black and dance music.

Forth 1 is a British local radio station, broadcasting to Lothian and Fife, and based in Forth Street in Edinburgh's city centre. The station broadcasts on 97.3 FM with relays covering West Lothian on 97.6 FM and Penicuik on 102.2 FM, as well as on DAB and online. The station plays a variety of music, mainly Top 40, but older tunes are also inserted into the playlist. Forth 1 is owned by Bauer Radio and operated by Radio Forth and forms part of Bauer's Hits Radio network of stations.

Wave 105 is a British regional commercial radio station broadcasting across East Dorset, South Hampshire, Isle of Wight and parts of West Sussex and Wiltshire. Playing a mix of adult contemporary music, it combines presenter-led shows with local news and information, entertainment guides and competitions. The station forms part of the Bauer City network. Almost its entire output is locally produced.

Forth 2 is a Scottish radio station owned and operated by Bauer Radio.

The UKRD Group Ltd is a British media company that owns 16 commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. The name originates from UK Radio Developments.

FM104 is an Independent Local Radio station broadcast across Dublin, Ireland, on the frequency 104.4 MHz. It is operated by Capital Radio Productions Limited, and is a subsidiary of the Wireless Group, which itself is a subsidiary of News UK. The station broadcasts under a sound broadcasting contract from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. FM104 broadcasts from Macken House in Dublin's Docklands.

Greatest Hits East Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire is a local radio station owned and operated by Bauer Radio as part of the Greatest Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire.

Greatest Hits South Yorkshire is a local radio station owned and operated by Bauer Radio as part of the Greatest Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to South Yorkshire and the North Midlands.

Wireless Group Limited is a radio and digital broadcasting network with its headquarters based in Belfast, Northern Ireland and with radio operations in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. It currently operates five stations in Ireland and 18 in the UK. The company was formerly known as UTV Media owned by UTV Television however, its television broadcasting services were sold to ITV plc in February 2016 and its radio, sales services and websites were spun-off into a new company called Wireless which was later purchased by News Corp.

Highland Radio is the local radio service for the County Donegal (North) franchise, operating under a licence from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI). Headquartered at the Mountain Top in Letterkenny, the station may also be received across the border in the city of Derry and the rest of that county, as well as County Tyrone, County Fermanagh and parts of County Antrim.

Bauer Radio is a UK-based radio division of the Bauer Media Group.

CN Group Limited was formerly an independent local media business based in Carlisle, Cumbria, England, operating in print and radio. It is now owned by Newsquest and their newspapers are printed in Glasgow.

Communicorp Media is a media holding company based in Ireland and owned wholly by the Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien.

XS Manchester is an Independent Local Radio station serving Greater Manchester, broadcasting a mix of peak-time news, rock music and talk output. The station is owned and operated by Communicorp and broadcasts from studios at studios at Spinningfields in Manchester.

STV Group plc, previously known as Scottish Television plc and Scottish Media Group plc, is a Scottish media company. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Originally formed as Scottish Television, the ITV licence holder for central Scotland, the company changed its name to Scottish Media Group in 1996 and acquired the licence holder for Northern Scotland, Grampian Television, in 1997. The Scottish and Grampian channels were rebranded as STV in 2006.

Greatest Hits Radio is a network of 18 local radio stations in Northern England, the West Midlands and Scotland, owned and operated by Bauer Radio.

A timeline of notable events relating to Kiss, a British commercial radio station operated by Bauer Radio.

References

↑ "Radio group in takeover talks". BBC News . 20 December 2000.
↑ Laing, Allan; Archer, Helen; West, Karl (22 June 2005). "Will Clyde flow on after takeover? Concern over future of city station after pounds-391m buyout". The Herald . Glasgow. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
↑ Brook, Stephen (21 June 2005). "Emap snaps up Scottish Radio Holdings". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2014.
↑ Farey-Jones, Daniel (7 December 2007). "Emap sells magazines and radio divisions to Bauer for £1.14bn". Campaign . Retrieved 4 July 2016.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "Radio group in takeover talks". BBC News . 20 December 2000.

[2] Laing, Allan; Archer, Helen; West, Karl (22 June 2005). "Will Clyde flow on after takeover? Concern over future of city station after pounds-391m buyout". The Herald . Glasgow. Retrieved 4 July 2016.

[3] Brook, Stephen (21 June 2005). "Emap snaps up Scottish Radio Holdings". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2014.

[4] Farey-Jones, Daniel (7 December 2007). "Emap sells magazines and radio divisions to Bauer for £1.14bn". Campaign . Retrieved 4 July 2016.