Heart of lightness

For listeners who can't stomach lads' pranks and guitar bands for breakfast, there is an alternative. Heart 106.2 FM's London breakfast show is grabbing the attention of women aged 25-44 - and now it's ready to take on the nation. By Glenda Cooper

JD is describing a barbecue in the States which costs $20,000 because it has everything - even a waste disposal unit and a telephone. Kara thinks it sounds great. David isn't so keen. We could be listening to a bunch of friends talking down the pub, but then the red light goes off, JD scurries off for a fag, Kara adjusts her script for the next weather slot and David sets up the desk for the next record.

The conversation is one in a regular slot called "News You Can't Use" on Heart 106.2 FM's breakfast show. This, like everything at Heart, has been meticulously planned to appeal to their target audience - 25- to 44-year-old women.

It was this attention to detail which helped the station win the Sony award for Best Breakfast Show earlier this year and attract almost a million listeners. Now Heart, which already runs a station in Birmingham in addition to London, is looking to bid for the North-west licence coming up in August and the North-east next January.

"We had to do something different, obviously," says Richard Huntingford, Heart's chief executive. "There was no point going with what Capital already had in place. We had the licence given to us on the terms that we were going for the 25-44 demographic target."

The difference has been described as a move away from the laddish humour of the shock jock to a softer, more listener-friendly station which picks its music and features very carefully and particularly appeals to women. There are fewer advertising breaks - a total of 12 commercial messages per hour and never more than three in any one break. This compares to 30 per hour on other stations.

The music is "adult contemporary" - translated as back-to-back ballads. You will not hear dance music on Heart, nor rap, nor techno nor hard rock. You will hear Jon Bon Jovi's latest single, "Midnight in Chelsea", which is melodic, but you will not hear "Livin' on a Prayer", which is rock. It could be best summed up by Simply Red, whose single "Holding Back The Years" was one of the most frequently played tracks last week. Other tracks included Lisa Stansfield's "Never Gonna Give You Up", Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" and "Search for the Hero" by M-People. "It's a mixture of music that you have great memories of - when you had your first boyfriend, first job, passed your driving test, but also not totally out of touch with the new music in the charts," says Richard Huntingford.

Nowhere is this ethos more apparent than on the breakfast show, where the three members of the crew - David Prever, who has just moved into television as well, Kara Noble, who was Chris Tarrant's sidekick on the Capital breakfast show, and Jon Davies, former head of news at Heart - are keen to stress how listener-friendly and non-offensive they are. "All too often, DJs make their names at the expense of their listeners, mocking them or worse," says David Prever, the anchor who drives the show. "I want my listeners to know I like them and know where they're coming from - as well as where they might be going to."

"I mean this most sincerely," he adds with a straight face. "It's not a laddish show. It's family based. We're not going to do something that would be offensive to women."

"Radio is your friend," adds Kara, who had to endure endless spoof insults from Tarrant when she was at Capital (he likened her face to King Kong's bottom and once told listeners she could qualify for pond life if only she had one more brain cell). "We get the listeners involved. We get listeners who ring in a lot and we get to know them. It's like one big family."

Having three equal members of the crew - what is known as the zoo format - means that no one character dominates. "We have a catchphrase - three times the fun!," says Will, the producer, brightly. "It's a bit like instead of going down the pub on your own, you go and find there are three mates already there. The idea is to be very realistic and not like a disc jockey."

The aim is also to be topical. Last Thursday's programme, a day after Gordon Brown announced his plans, offered all the things that went up in the Budget - whisky, cigarettes, beer, petrol - to the listener who most accurately guessed how long it took the Chancellor to deliver his speech.

The three characters have been carefully chosen and worked on to guarantee maximum appeal, and they work extremely well together. David Prever is disastrously single, so there is much teasing about his nights, with gags about Lean Cuisine meals in front of the computer. Kara Noble appears as the good-time girl forever going out to showbizzy parties. JD, who does the news, appears as the "voice of truth", while also telling stories about his divorced wife.

David says he imagines the target listener to be a 30-year-old woman; Kara imagines a minicab driver or a fireman. "Each of us is as we are but we obviously build up our characters a little," says Kara. "We develop them and reveal quite a lot."

On Thursday's programme, there was much excitement. A rough tape of "It's Henmania" sung by Kara and Bonnie Langford to the tune of "Que Sera Sera" had been requested by Dutch Television, Newsroom South East and the BBC World Service Bengali division.

Listener features include items such as "The phrase that pays", in which a woman has to ring up her partner and get him to say a particular phrase. In Thursday's show, it was "Are you pregnant?"

While Chris Evans ran spots with names such as "I'm in bed with my boyfriend" and "Stick your tongue in", the morning crew's most famous feature is the coy "Spousal arousal" in which someone, usually a woman, has to try to tempt back her partner for a bit of what Prever calls "lunchtime loving".

Capital, with 3 million listeners, say it is unmoved by Heart's challenge in the London radio market. But Richard Huntingford says that there was a gap in the market which they have spotted and filled. "We think what we have got hold of here has just as much chance of building to the same sort of audience level [as Capital]. London is obviously a more competitive market than elsewhere." He is determined to win the licences for the North-west and North-east, where he feels the successful formula in London and Birmingham can be repeated. "It is a great opportunity"n

What she wants: the most frequently played songs on Heart last week

Holding Back the Years - Simply Red

I Wanna Be the Only One - Eternal & Be Be Winans

Fast Love - George Michael

I'm Still Standing - Elton John

Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman - Bryan Adams

Midnight in Chelsea - Jon Bon Jovi

Kiss From a Rose - Seal

Never Gonna Give You Up - Lisa Stansfield

Shiny Happy People - REM

Search For a Hero - M-People

Mmm Bop - Hanson

Love Fool - The Cardigans

Call the Man - Celine Dion

Tell Me is it True - UB40

Gotham City - R Kelly

Black Eyed Boy - Texas