Classic Gold WABC
| Broadcast area | Wolverhampton and Shropshire |
|---|---|
| Slogan | Nice'n'Easy The best mix of golden oldies |
| Frequency | 990 kHz in Wolverhampton 1017 kHz in Shropshire DAB |
| First air date | 15 January 1989 |
| Format | Oldies |
| Owner | Classic Gold Digital (UBC) |
Coordinates: 51°53′25″N 0°31′47″W / 51.8903°N 0.5298°W
Classic Gold WABC was a United Kingdom radio station, broadcasting to much of Wolverhampton and Shropshire from studios in Dunstable. Regional news, weather, events and community information, local advertising (separate for Wolverhampton and Shropshire) and a four-hour live weekday regional programme came from a studio centre in Wolverhampton, home also to Beacon Radio.
The station, along with the rest of the Classic Gold network, was replaced on 3 August 2007 by a new network called simply Gold, the result of the merger of the Classic Gold and Capital Gold networks under one owner, GCap Media.
The station began as Radio WABC in 1989 (the letters WABC standing for Wolverhampton and Black Country). The offshoot of the area's long-established Beacon Radio, it was launched as a response to government disapproval of the simulcasting of radio companies' FM programming on their mediumwave frequencies. Beacon began to cater for a younger audience following the frequency split, while the new AM service started to aim its programming toward a much older audience. Beacon's American management had originally wanted to use the name WABC for Beacon, but at the time of its launch during the 1970s, the IBA had considered the name too American (the W ITU prefix is designated for call signs in the United States; WABC in that country is used by an unrelated radio station in New York City).
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