GCap Media have officially announced the name for the new classic hits network. Gold will replace Classic Gold and Capital Gold from 7pm on Friday August 3rd. As revealed by RadioToday.co.uk last week, Tony Blackburn will stand down from the breakfast show he's hosted for the past four and a half years.
Andy Turner, Gold's Station Director, will oversee the development and evolution of the network. There will be four hours of daily afternoon local pre-recorded programming with traffic, news and weather provided locally and news coverage increased to three minutes per hour.
Gold will have an approximate audience of 1.7 million adults with 12 million listening hours, making it the 8th largest commercial national station in the UK based on reach.
Steve Orchard, Group Operations Director of GCap Media, said: "As announced in our preliminary results at the end of May, GCap Media is committed to investing in national brands with multi-media capabilities that appeal to communities of passionate music fans. The new Gold network will greatly appeal to authentic music fans and will reinvigorate the way classic hits radio is presented."
Tony Blackburn said: "After four and a half years presenting the Breakfast show on Classic Gold I have decided now is as good a time as ever to move on from a Network that I have enjoyed presenting on immensely.
"The Classic Gold listeners are a brilliant bunch and I hope they have enjoyed waking up with me as much as I have enjoyed getting them up. I am sure that our paths will cross in the future as I am in discussions with GCap about a series of new shows.
"I have a number of exciting radio projects in the pipeline including finding suitable ways (on September 30th) to celebrate 40 years since I woke up the nation on the very first Radio 1 breakfast show. On top of that my autobiography, Poptastic, is coming out in a few months and I will be devoting a lot of time signing copies of that – so make sure you all buy one.
"Classic Gold has been an enormously fun place to work and for that I have all the management and staff, co-presenters, sponsors and advertisers to thank."
Andy Turner commented: "Tony is one of the legendary UK broadcasters, has been a dedicated Classic Gold DJ and done a great job in his role hosting breakfast. He will remain on the GCap books and I look forward to working with him on a number of programmes to coincide with the launch of his autobiography."
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