106.9 West Hull FM

West Hull FM
Broadcast area West Hull, and surrounding areas
Slogan Your Community, your Station
Frequency 106.9FM, online and via TuneIn app
First air date 26 March 2007
Format Popular Music and Local Based Speech
Website www.westhullfm.org.uk

106.9 West Hull FM formerly known as (WHCR FM) West Hull Community Radio, is a local community radio station, which launched in 2007, as the first community station in the city of Kingston upon Hull, England.[1] It serves the areas of West Hull, and surrounding towns and villages of Anlaby, Cottingham, Hessle and Willerby with an adult population of over 90,000.

The station is staffed almost entirely by volunteers supported by a full-time paid station manager; Michael Tuton, who was appointed in December 2013.

About

The station gears its music policy from the music of 1950s to present-day releases during daytime hours. It plays a broad mix during the evening through a diverse range specialist music shows focusing on Country, Rock, Folk, Bangla, Jazz and Classical. With the relatively recent increase in the popularity of the local music scene, partially down to a large push by other local radio stations, the station has also recently started playing local music too.

Since 2015 they have also broadcast an LGBT news and discussion programme called "Loud & Proud", the only of its kind in the region and "The Community Show" with interviews and information supporting the voluntary and charitable sectors in Hull

West Hull FM's output focuses on local news, community events via a "What's On Guide" and sports, with regular updates on its daytime programmes, generally between 8am and 5pm on weekdays and 9am to 12 noon on the weekend. The station works on an average 60% music - 40% speech principle with each show having slightly different amounts of these.[2]

The West Hull-based station after having originally launched in the Goodwin Centre building in Icehouse Road moved in 2009 to a studio in Anlaby Road. More recently the station completed their most recent studio-move on 19 October 2012 to a new purpose built studio in the Darley's building, formerly a public house on Porter Street.

Between late 2013 and early 2014 the station saw a large shift in management and gradually a large number of staff and volunteers left the company after internal disagreements between many of the volunteers and paid management. Many of them have since been involved in the startups of two new radio stations in East Yorkshire, Beverley FM based in Beverley and Hull Kingston Radio based in East Hull.

In October 2014, the station was rebranded as 106.9 West Hull FM, although the station's broadcast on 106.9FM in Hull still bares the handle 'WHCR FM'. With its new tagline 'Your Community, Your Station', the aim of the newly re-branded station was to provide a stronger focus on the local community with the introduction of new presenters and locally made programmes. This included The Community Show with Greg Harman; a speech based programme focusing on the local charitable and voluntary sector, a new live Saturday morning show presented by Simon Williams, a weekly live LGBT discussion programme called 'Loud & Proud' on Tuesday evenings and a Rock music programme on Thursday evenings.

A new website was also launched at the same time which allows people to listen to the station live online in addition to their allocated FM frequency in the local area. The station's web stream can be found in the TuneIn directory. The station has over 50 Twitter followers.

In 2015 the station worked with BBC Radio Humberside as part of BBC Radio's project with community radio to produce news pieces about local stories like Hull's 'City of Culture' preparations. News pieces were played on both stations.

In 2016 the station formed a partnership with HullFire radio based at Hull University. Their 'Screen One' film review and 'World Noise' world music programmes have been broadcast on the station since February 2016.

Staff

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 "106.9FM WHCR – 'At the heart of the community'", Media UK
  2. ↑ "WHCR OFCOM Public File" (PDF). Retrieved 20 November 2009.

External links

Coordinates: 53°44′38″N 0°22′40″W / 53.7438°N 0.3777°W / 53.7438; -0.3777

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