Great Yorkshire Radio

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.

It was originally formed when Viking Radio split its frequencies and turned its medium wave service into "Viking Gold" on 31 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, Colin Bates 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.

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