Andover and Newbury Sound to become Breeze

Celdaor Radio has announced plans to change the names of Andover Sound and Newbury Sound to The Breeze next month.

The group bought the two licences last summer, and says it has been making gradual changes to output since then ahead of the rebrand on 2nd April.

It will bring the number of licences broadcasting The Breeze to 9 and create a third ‘cluster’ in the Thames Valley to add to ‘South’ and ‘West’.

The Breeze started life on the Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester licences, before the addition of a station in Bristol when Star rebranded. The Bristol version has since added licences in Bath, Frome & West Wiltshire and Bridgwater & West Somerset following acquisitions by Celador.

Celador also owns the stations in Southampton and Bristol broadcasting as Jack FM (both launched as Original 106), as well as its latest purchase Midwest Radio, which is two Ofcom licences. Celador has no immediate plans to rebrand Midwest as The Breeze, but Radio Today understands it is highly likely to happen at some stage in the future.

Celador Radio’s Group Creative Director Richard Johnson told RadioToday.co.uk that the Andover and Newbury stations are already essentially The Breeze in all but name. “It’s currently running the musical database from The Breeze, same voiceover and same clocks,” he said. “Only the name will change on 2nd April. Since we bought the stations we’ve co-located them – both operate out of Andover but we still retain premises in Newbury. Slowly we’ve migrated the music over and made programming changes and the final thing is just to flip the name over.”

Networked mid-morning and evening shows currently air across all The Breeze stations and have been taken by Andover Sound and Newbury Sound in recent months, although they’ve not been identifying the station on air as The Breeze.

In this week’s eRADIO, you can read more about The Breeze as well as other regional and local stations moving to new brand identities over the next few weeks. Sign up here to receive our free newsletter direct to your inbox each Wednesday morning at 9am.