Greatest Hits Radio South Wales
radio station in Swansea
Greatest Hits Radio South Wales (formerly Swansea Sound) is an Independent Local Radio station owned and operated by Bauer Radio as part of the Greatest Hits Radio network. The station broadcasts to Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and South Carmarthenshire from studios in the Llansamlet area of Swansea on DAB.
Up until 2022, the station broadcast on 1170 kHz.
As of March 2024, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 136,000, according to RAJAR.
History
Launch
Swansea Sound began broadcasting at 6am, on Monday 30 September 1974. The first voice heard on air was its managing director, Charles Braham:
"Bore da. Good Morning. As managing director I am very proud to say for the very first time that this is Swansea Sound bringing independent radio to Wales, to entertain, to inform and above all give yourselves a real involvement in community matters..."
Chris Harper presented the station's first breakfast show, opening with MFSB's Love Is The Message. At its launch, it was the first and only commercial radio station in Wales and the seventh in the United Kingdom. It was also the first independent radio station to broadcast a bilingual service in the English and Welsh languages.
Originally, the station broadcast on 257 metres (1170 kHz) AM and 95.1 FM before moving its FM frequency to 96.4 in the early 1980s.
Frequency split, launch of The Wave (1995)
Until the early 1990s, FM adoption in the UK was relatively low, so it was common practice among stations to simulcast their programming on both AM and FM frequencies.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Greatest Hits Radio South Wales” as radio station in Swansea. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as radio station in Swansea. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7653712. Authority coordinates are 51.651, -4.039. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022, 1170, 2024 and 1974.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Greatest Hits Radio South Wales”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Greatest Hits Radio South Wales primary sources, Greatest Hits Radio South Wales archive and Greatest research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Greatest Hits Radio South Wales” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.