Classic Gold - History

History

It was originally formed when Viking Radio split its frequencies and turned its medium wave service into "Viking Gold" in on 30 October 1988; at the time this was group's first oldies station. Pennine and Hallam soon followed on 1 May 1989 and a network was formed calling itself Classic Gold.

For most of its life, Classic Gold was produced with a presenter in Hull, and local 'tech-ops' in Bradford and Sheffield. In Bradford two sets of adverts would be played out - one for Bradford and one for the Halifax/Huddersfield transmitter. Tech-ops included Paul Bromley, Rol Hirst, Melanie Robinson, Richard Hizzard, James Cridland and Peter Carter. Part of the tech-op's duties would also be to drive the desk for the news readers - the first three minutes of which were taken by the FM station, while Classic Gold listeners got a full five minutes of news.

Tech-ops were instructed by talk-back from the presenter studio in Hull what the 'out-cue' was going to be. Breaks were balanced by the tech-op, not by the scheduling department. A tale about Keith Skues was that he would give an out-cue of "time-check", and would then announce "the time is three little ducks". This was followed by a long pause, causing the local tech-ops to fire off the ad-break once they'd realised it was 2.22 pm. The talkback was some kind of radio link, and occasionally was interfered with by Hull taxis.

A stand-by CD was in satellite studios in case of line failure; in Bradford, the dulcet tones of Nina Simone's "My baby just cares for me" meant the line had gone dead.

In the early 1990s GWR Group which had just bought 2CR and 210 took YRN's Classic Gold from midnight till 6am, which then became Brunel, 2CR Classic Gold etc. The name was used in Yorkshire by YRN some 12 months before the GWR group.

After being taken over by the Metro Radio group in the early 90s, Alan Ross then PC of Classic Gold moved to Pennine FM to launch The Pulse(now of Magic 1170),Classic Gold was relaunched as "Great Yorkshire Radio", later "Great Yorkshire Gold".

The station continued in all three areas, even after the sale of the Bradford-based station (along with its FM sister station The Pulse of West Yorkshire) to the Radio Partnership in 1996. This had occurred because Radio Authority rules at the time prevented Emap from owning stations in Leeds and Bradford which had significant overlap.

In 1997 promotional trailers began running across all three Great Yorkshire Gold stations saying that they would be soon converting to become Magic, despite the fact that this would not be the case in West Yorkshire, where negotiations were underway to take GWR plc's Classic Gold service. Unhappy with the confusion being caused to listeners, bosses in Bradford decided to create an emergency local service whilst the talks continued with GWR plc and 1278 and 1530 AM West Yorkshire ran for a couple of weeks before Classic Gold was put to air. The Classic Gold brand continues in West Yorkshire (apart from a brief period when the station became Big AM), still using the GCap-owned "Gold" programming; currently it is branded as Pulse Classic Gold.