Amber Radio was a classic hits/gold radio station operating from studios in both

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

and

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

, in the region of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. It was the AM sister station of

Radio Broadland Radio Broadland (later Heart Norwich) was an Independent Local Radio station for Norfolk and North Suffolk, including Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, until early 2009. The station, now part of the national Heart Network, is owned and operat ...

and SGR and served

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

and

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

, covering a population of over a million.

History

The station was launched after

East Anglian Radio East Anglian Radio was a company based in Norwich that operated radio stations in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex in the UK. The stations owned by the group were: *Radio Broadland in Norwich. *SGR FM in Ipswich & Bury St Edmunds (origi ...

decided to make better use of the group's

medium wave Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...

frequencies. On 24 September 1995, the AM frequencies of Broadland and SGR fm became Amber Radio, playing mainly music from the 1960s and 1970s, allowing the FM stations to focus more on current and recent chart hits. All the stations were programmed by EAR group programme director Mike Stewart, with Dave Brown in Norwich and Mark Pryke at Ipswich as local heads of presentation. Programmes emanated from the two broadcast centres for both group and separate areas. The station continued for some time in the same format and under the same management after a takeover of the East Anglian Radio group by GWR about a year later. Amber Radio was eventually renamed Classic Gold Amber and it joined GWR's

Classic Gold Digital Network Classic Gold Digital Network was one of the biggest 'gold' (oldies) formatted radio networks in the United Kingdom, with a potential audience of 47 million. Classic Gold was broadcast on analogue and DAB digital platforms, as well as Sky channel ...

of stations in 1998. During the same year, GWR began to pressurise the

Radio Authority Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

to allow them to 'network' Classic Gold for up to 20 hours a day. This meant that all of the stations in the Classic Gold network would receive the same programmes for most of the day, including the stations in Norwich and Ipswich. GWR's argument was that the use of higher profile presenters would allow listeners a better quality of service. The Radio Authority agreed to the change and all the stations began sharing the programmes produced in

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council wa ...

, more than 100 miles from the Norwich studios. At this stage, the only local programme remaining on Classic Gold Amber was the Breakfast Show, this was later changed to Drivetime to allow

Mike Read Michael David Kenneth Read (born 1 March 1947) is an English radio disc jockey, writer, journalist and television presenter. Read has been a broadcaster since 1976, best known for having been a DJ with BBC Radio 1, and television host for musi ...

and later

Dave Lee Travis David Patrick Griffin (born 25 May 1945), known professionally as Dave Lee Travis, is an English disc jockey, radio presenter and television presenter. Travis began his broadcasting career on the pirate radio station Radio Caroline in 1965. He ...

to present a networked breakfast show. Due to GWR exceeding the ownership limit of stations, the Classic Gold stations were sold to UBC Media, although GWR kept hold of a 20 per cent stake. On 3 August 2007 the stations were re-branded as

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

. This followed the

GCap Media GCap Media was a British commercial radio company formed from the merger of the Capital Radio Group and GWR Group. The merger was completed in May 2005. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. ...

purchase of the Classic Gold network and the merging of the

Capital Gold The Capital Gold radio station started in London in 1988 on Capital Radio's AM frequency, after the Independent Broadcasting Authority had urged stations to end simulcasting (broadcasting the same programmes simultaneously on AM and FM) and t ...

and Classic Gold stations.

Branding

Prior to being taken over by GWR, Amber Radio's station idents were specially written by American jingles specialist, Bruce Upchurch and produced by UK-based David Arnold Music with Mike Stewart at

Thompson Creative Thompson Creative is an American radio jingle production company formerly based in Dallas, Texas. History In 1986, broadcasters Larry and Susan Thompson set up Thompson Creative with the idea of updating the "traditional" jingle sound. Utilizin ...

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

. From launch, Amber Radio, along with its sister stations,

Broadland 102 Radio Broadland (later Heart Norwich) was an Independent Local Radio station for Norfolk and North Suffolk, including Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, until early 2009. The station, now part of the national Heart Network, is owned and operat ...

(Norfolk) and

SGR FM Heart Ipswich (formerly SGR FM) was a radio station that evolved from Suffolk Group Radio, which was the parent company for two Independent radio stations serving the county of Suffolk in England. Overview The older of the radio stations was Rad ...

SGR Colchester Heart Colchester (formerly SGR Colchester) was a radio station broadcasting to Colchester and the surrounding areas. The station was launched in 1993 as SGR Colchester by the East Anglian Radio group, which also operated the Ipswich-based SGR-FM, ...

(Suffolk / Essex), broadcast jingles made at

TM Studios Jones Radio Networks & Jones Media Group were branches of Jones International before being sold to Triton Media Group. JRN and JMN provide local radio stations with satellite-delivered formats. They also offer other services to local radio such a ...

(previously Century 21), also in

References

External links

Article about computers taking over radio which refers to Amber Radio/Classic Gold AmberFormer presenter websiteDiscussion on Amber Radio's merger with Gold networkArticle on GWRs roll out of Classic Gold
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amber Radio Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom Radio stations in Norfolk Radio stations established in 1995 Radio stations disestablished in 2007 Radio stations in Suffolk