Harborough's Community Station
HFM, Market Harborough’s
very own radio station, now has a licence to broadcast 24 hours a day,
7 days a week on 102.3FM.
HFM plays music to suit all tastes which has proved so popular with listeners
in the past.
Run and managed by a dedicated team of volunteers, the station will continue
its famous mix of music, from the 1960’s to today, competitions and community
event promotion, overseen by its unique mix of presenters.
To keep up to date with HFM news or to get in touch log onto www.harboroughfm.co.uk
and anyone interested in finding out more about advertising on the station
should call 01858 466984.
A brief history
The original
pioneer for local radio in Harborough was John Fitzpatric. In the autumn
of 1994, a small group of people attended a meeting in the settling rooms
to discuss the possibility of providing a radio station for the town. This
resulted in the first broadcast, which was made in May 1995, from a small
makeshift studio attached to the Six Packs Pub on the Leicester Road. The
28 day license came to a climax with coverage of the Harborough Carnival
in June that year, finally closing at 10.00pm on Saturday 17th June 1995
with Chris Rea's "Fool If You Think It's Over", which left us
in no doubt that they would soon return.
Since then, there have been a number of broadcasts over the years on a temporary
basis, some by splinter groups with stations like Valley FM and Big Dial
Radio. With the move to larger premises on the first floor of a building
in St. Mary's Road, HFM was able to provide a much better service. With
the use of two studios, the presenters used computers to tie in jingles
and adverts along with sound mixers to produce the programmes.
Improving the signal
Market
Harborough is in a notoriously bad location for receiving FM airwaves, due
to it lying in the Welland Basin. In the early days, when the transmission
was broadcast from the town, the signal was patchy and soon lost away from
Harborough, or even in parts of the town itself. This was overcome with
the introduction of a micro link with a transmitter at Dingley, which gave
a good strong signal as far away as Leicester city centre. Later the micro
link was with a transmitter at Little Oxendon Farm, boosting the signal
to parts of the midlands as far away as Peterborough and Ashby -de-la-Zouch.
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