Heart Kent

[1] The companies that were awarded the licences to broadcast to these areas were Northdown Radio and Network East Kent respectively.

Plus, in the Invicta Sound days, there was some separate programming for East and West Kent, including dedicated Drivetime shows for each half of the county.

This problem did not affect BBC national and local radio, which use a single high-powered site at Swingate, near Dover.

In 1991, controversy was sparked as one of the famous DJs, Chris Ryder (aka Caesar the Boogieman), was sacked over criminal charges related to theft from charity.

He was ultimately found not guilty on these charges, but was convicted of intent to defraud[6] Also in 1991, the Maidstone studios and offices closed and a few months later, the entire company moved to a brand new, larger, building just outside Whitstable.

This was due to the company getting too big for its Canterbury home having started to expand its radio operations beyond Kent.

These new stations mainly adopted a much larger playlist of songs and, despite some major audiences successes (mainly Thanet) they gradually put extra pressure on Invicta's advertising revenue.

This usually ran from midnight or 1 am until 6 am, although the later launch of an "early breakfast" programme on Invicta FM meant the overnight presenter would do the last hour on Supergold only.

The change happened with no promotion, save for a handful of promos scheduled to run over the weekend prior to the Monday launch.

This was ahead of the roll out of Capital Gold across other AM stations owned by the company; the Kent site acted as a test station, chosen in part because of its close proximity to Capital Gold in London, to ensure syndication worked, and to iron out any problems.

By September, Capital Gold could also be heard in Birmingham, Sussex, Hampshire and, not long after, South Wales.

Kent's local opt-out show was then presented by Tim Stewart, who moved over from Invicta FM.

Kent's breakfast show host by now was Neil Winfield who left the station and ex-Invicta jock Russ Lowe came in to present the 12-4 slot on weekdays.

Boddy changed Invicta from the style influenced by nearby Capital FM, to one which roughly resembled the old Mix Network.

In May 2008, both Craig Boddy and Regional Programme Director Peter Sinclair left and in July 2008 former Invicta FM and KMFM Programme Controller Mike Osborne was appointed to the newly created role of Programme Director On 30 June 2008, following the relaxation of OFCOM regulations on networking, the new owners of GCap Media, Global Radio, cut minimum local programming to ten hours on weekdays (from 6 to 10 am and 1 to 7 pm) and four hours on Saturdays & Sundays (from 8 am to 12 pm).

The strapline also mirrored Heart's - More Music Variety - as did the name of the now renamed 'guess the year' feature, The Time Tunnel.

Two weeks before the rebrand, all references to the Invicta FM name were removed, and trailers advertising "Heart is coming" were played after every song.

[9] As of June 2019, regional output on the merged 'Heart South' station consists of a three-hour Drivetime show on weekdays, alongside local news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising.

[citation needed] For a time, commercial breaks continued to be split four ways on Invicta FM, with East, West, Thanet and Ashford as sub-regions.

Neil Francis was the initial lead presenter of the show until 2000 - he was later partnered with Sam Hughes (known on air simply as 'Sam').

Both Hemming and Ives left Heart Kent on 24 May 2019, one week before the station ceased all local programming.