Classic Gold
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Classic Gold was a network of three "Gold" music formatted stations which broadcast on AM in Bradford, Hull and Sheffield. They were the Pennine Radio, Viking Radio and Radio Hallam's medium wave franchises. These stations were part of the Yorkshire Radio Network.
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[edit] History
It was originally formed when Viking Radio split its frequencies and turned its medium wave service into "Viking Gold" in 1988, at the time this was group's first oldies station. Pennine and Hallam soon followed 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 2 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 and James Cridland. 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 2.22pm. 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!
Classic Gold even produced some overnight programming for the non-related GWR network of stations which shared the same name, this group is now simply know as "Gold". Incidentally, 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 90's Alan Ross (now of Magic 1170) became Programme controller and 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 utilising the GCap owned "Gold" programming, currently it's branded as Pulse Classic Gold.
[edit] Programming
Each station had its own, local breakfast show presenter - in Bradford it was Roger Kirk, in Hull it was Chris Bell (now at Home 107.9), in Sheffield it was Gerry Kersey (now at BBC Radio Sheffield).
Network programming began at 9.00am, with Alan Ross on mornings, and Keith Skues on lunchtimes. Peter Fairhead was also a regular presenter. Local programmes took over after Drivetime at 7.00pm, with sports programmes and specialist music. For example on the West Yorkshire frequencies in 1989 there were brass band programmes, old dance music, and 'music from the hippy era' presented by Nigel Schofield.
Weekends included a large amount of local programming, including religious programming on Sundays with local clergy (Bradford had Martin Short as one of their presenters), and sports programming, including Rugby with Iain Williamson and football with Chris Cooper.
[edit] Branding
The Classic Gold jingles were resings of classic PAMS jingles, making the station sound more like an offshore pirate of the 60s - a sound familiar to Programme Director Keith Skues - himself a veteran of Radio Caroline and Wonderful Radio London. The station even had its own version of the "Sonovox waltz" as used by Radio London, this was heard usually every hour just before the news.
The Great Yorkshire Gold jingles were re-sings of the Great North Radio package produced by Alfasound, they also used the same slogans. At this time the station logo used the same font style as its sister station GNR too.
[edit] Former presenters
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