Radio Heart Home Counties (Beds, Bucks & Herts)

Heart Home Counties is an Independent Local Radio station broadcasting to Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire. The station began broadcasting at 4pm on Friday 16 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Milton Keynes (formerly Horizon Radio), Heart Northants (formerly Northants 96), Heart Dunstable (formerly 97.6 Chiltern FM) and Heart Bedford (formerly 96.9 Chiltern Radio).

Further information: Heart Milton Keynes, Heart Northants, Heart Dunstable, and Heart BedfordThe regional station originally broadcast as four separate stations - Chiltern Radio began broadcasting to Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in October 1981 and launched a separate Bedford station in June 1982. Northants 96 began broadcasting to Northamptonshire in November 1986 and Horizon Radio launched in north Buckinghamshire in October 1989.

These stations were owned and operated by the Chiltern Radio Group, which was sold off to the GWR Group in 1995. Subsequently, the GWR Group merged with Capital Radio in 2005 to form GCap Media, which was subsequently bought out by Global Radio in 2008.

On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced it would merge the four stations as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 separate stations to 16 co-located 'broadcast centres'. The new station began broadcasting from Dunstable on Friday 16 July 2010.