History
Based in Nottingham on the City link in the Sneinton area of the city centre, the station was launched on 23 September 1997 as Radio 106. In April 1998, station owners, Border Radio Holdings felt a change was needed, so in April 1998, John Myers took control over the station and it was rebranded as Century 106.
In May 2000, Century 106 was sold to Capital Radio, who then merged with GWR Group in 2004 forming GCap Media. GCap were required to sell the East Midlands station (as the combined firm also owned a number of other stations in the region), and thus Century 106 was sold to Chrysalis, owners of Heart in London and the West Midlands. As such, the station was relaunched as Heart 106 on 29 August 2005. A further, more subtle rebrand was applied in September 2006 which saw the dropping of the frequencies from station names across the Heart Network.
On the 25 June 2007 it was announced that Heart 106 along with its sister stations were to be sold for £170 million to Global Radio. Following Global Radio's takeover of GCap Media, the Office of Fair Trading ordered Global to sell five of its Midlands stations. In May 2009, the stations were sold to Orion Media, a company backed by Lloyds TSB Development Capital and Phil Riley.
In November 2010, Orion Media announced that Heart 106 would be relaunched and renamed as Gem 106 from 1st January 2011.
It is transmitted from the Copt Oak transmitter close to the M1 north of Leicester in the National Forest.
Read more about this topic: Gem 106
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