On 31 October 1988 Viking Gold had launched but by 1 May 1989 it was now Classic Gold and networked to Hull,
Bradford and Sheffield. A year later it
was snapped up by the expanding Metro Radio Group and was soon re-titled Great Yorkshire Radio (to complement their
Great North Radio in Newcastle). A decline in audiences and the realisation
that the Gold name and format was perhaps, erm, “radio gold”, it became Great Yorkshire Gold in 1994. (Does
anyone know the exact date?). (In fact it was 13 September 1993 according to John Foster who presented the first show, so he should know!)
Classic Gold promoGreat Yorkshire Gold jingles
From a 1995 Gold publicity leaflet, at a time when
Steven Parkinson was the Programme Controller, the DJ line-up at Great
Yorkshire Gold was:
John Foster – these days broadcasting daily on BBC Tees
Mark Jones – formerly “Mark Joenz” of Radio City and still working in radio in the North-West
Steve Colman – latterly with Magic 1152 in the North-East
Chris Straw – ex-Radio Sheffield but other than that nothing known though I have found this clip from 1996:
Gerry Kersey – still broadcasting every Sunday afternoon on BBC Radio Sheffield
Ann Hodgson – ??
Peter Hetherington – is or was serving time in prison
Peter Fairhead – mentioned in the last Viking post
John Harding – who went into radio management and currently works for Bauer Media
Here’s two
Great Yorkshire Gold airchecks. Firstly from 16 August 1996 Peter Fairhead
sitting in for Al Dupres. You’ll notice those classic JAM jingles familiar to
Radio 1 listeners in the 70s complete with
“Beep Beep Yeah Travel News”.
By the time
of this Al Dupres show on Monday 10 February 1997 the station’s days were numbered
prior to the Magic makeover.
The Metro
group had been bought out by media group EMAP in August 1995 and they started
to roll out their Magic branding. On 12 February 1997 Great Yorkshire Gold was
replaced by Magic 1161 using what it
called “The Big Easy” format. With a mix of oldies and contemporary hits with long
sweeps of music that seemed to consist of Phil Collins and Celine Dion, or that
may be just my memory of it!
The launch
was live from Cave Castle in South Cave. In charge of proceedings was Nick
Wright - still doing his thing daily on the Magic network. Nick’s first guest, on
the phone from Geneva, was Phil Collins (talking for far too long before we get
into the first record, Two Hearts so
I’ve edited this bit but listen out for the mystery voice asking “you are
there, aren’t you?”).
In the next and final post what’s going on over on FM.
