Gold North Wales and Cheshire (originally Marcher Gold and later Classic Gold Marcher) was a British

independent local radio Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, and deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2003, ...

station broadcasting to

Wrexham Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...

Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...

Flintshire , settlement_type = County , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , image_flag = , image_shield = Arms of Flint ...

and some of

the Wirral Wirral (; ), known locally as The Wirral, is a peninsula in North West England. The roughly rectangular peninsula is about long and wide and is bounded by the River Dee, Wales, River Dee to the west (forming the boundary with Wales), the Ri ...

, and was part of the

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 ...

radio network There are two types of radio network currently in use around the world: the one-to-many (simplex communication) broadcast network commonly used for public information and mass-media entertainment, and the two-way radio ( duplex communication) type ...

. It is the "sister" station to local FM station,

Marcher Sound Heart Cheshire and North East Wales (formerly Marcher Sound and previously MFM 103.4) was an independent radio station broadcasting to north east Wales and Cheshire from its Mold Road studios in Gwersyllt, Wrexham, also shared with Gold and H ...

, launched by

Marcher Radio Group Marcher Radio Group Ltd, previously Marcher Sound Ltd, was a British media organisation which operated several radio stations in north Wales and northwest England. The company, now owned by Global Radio (but legally still existing,) founded the ...

in 1989. After a period of sales and takeovers which led to Gold being operated by a separate company to its FM sister station, both are now owned by

Global Radio Global Media & Entertainment Limited, trading as Global, is a British media company formed in 2007. It is the owner of the largest commercial radio company in Europe having expanded through a number of historical acquisitions, including Chrysa ...

. It is broadcast from Mold Road,

Gwersyllt Gwersyllt () is an urban village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The densely populated village is one of Wrexham's largest and is situated in the north western suburbs of the city, bordering the nearby villages of Llay, Cefn-y ...

, Wrexham, although most programming comes from London. Gold North Wales and Cheshire was replaced by

Smooth Radio Smooth Radio may refer to: * Smooth Radio (2010), the original national network in the UK * Smooth Radio (2014) See also * Smoothfm smoothfm is an Australian commercial radio network owned and operated by NOVA Entertainment. From original ...

in March 2014.

History

The station launched in 1989 when new radio regulations prevented the simulcasting of independent local radio stations on AM radio bands, and therefore

created MFM 103.4 on FM, while the 1260 AM frequency became Marcher Gold. Both frequencies previously simulcast

. Marcher Radio Group was purchased by

GWR Group 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. ...

in 2000, which also included the sale of Marcher Gold. However, after regulations on how many stations one company could own, Marcher Gold became part of the ''

Classic Gold Classic Gold was a network of three "Gold" music formatted stations which broadcast on AM in Bradford, Hull and Sheffield. They were the sister stations of Pennine Radio, Viking Radio and Radio Hallam respectively and they were part of the Yo ...

, when the majority stake of the network was sold to

UBC Media UBC Media Group was a production and content creation company which began as the Unique Broadcasting Company in 1989. In June 2014 the company merged with 7digital to form a global digital music and radio platform. The new company was called 7digi ...

, with GWR retaining 20%. As a consequence, all participating stations in the network were re-branded, and Marcher Gold became ''Classic Gold Marcher''. Despite the changes in ownership, Classic Gold Marcher continued to share facilities with the GWR Group-owned former sister station, MFM 103.4. GWR Group merged with

Capital Radio Group 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. O ...

in 2005, creating

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. ...

. After approval from the regulator, GCap successfully purchased 18 of the Classic Gold Network stations from UBC and merged it with its own

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 ...

network, forming simply "

" on 3 August 2007. As a result, the station's Wrexham and Chester licence was renamed "Gold North Wales and Cheshire". In 2008 GCap Media was purchased by

Content

Since the renaming of the station as Gold, local content included a daily four-hour local show, at one time presented by Simon Nicks. Local news bulletins feature hourly from 6am until 6pm, with local headlines during breakfast and drivetime. There are also regular local travel bulletins and local commercial breaks. It generally focuses on classic hit and late 20th Century music. When the station was providing local programmes in daytime, Drivetime ended an hour earlier than the rest of the Gold Network at 6pm for an hour-long

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language family, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut P ...

programme called ''Cŵl Cymru'' which was networked with

Champion 103 Capital Cymru is a local Welsh-language radio station owned and operated by Global. The station broadcasts to Gwynedd and Anglesey from studios in Gwersyllt, Wrexham via the Arfon transmitting station. Previously, the station formed part of th ...

and later repeated at 10pm on

Coast 96.3 Heart North Wales Coast (formerly Coast 96.3 and originally Marcher Coast FM) was an independent local radio station broadcast along the North Wales coast, and owned & operated by Global Radio. The station, which broadcast from studios in Colwy ...

. All stations are in the

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

of Global Radio. The Welsh programming was later dropped from Gold (though remaining on the FM stations as required by their licences) such that Gold could take the networked programming from London outside of a single daily local four-hour programme, also the format used by Gold's stations in England until local programming was dropped on these in 2010.

References

External links

Gold Network homepage
{{Smooth Radio Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom Radio stations established in 1989 1989 establishments in Wales Radio stations disestablished in 2014 2014 disestablishments in Wales Global Radio Marcher Radio Group Radio stations in Wales Wrexham Radio stations in Cheshire Chester