PICCADILLY RADIO 261

Piccadilly Radio 261 is on air right now. It is an independent, non-profit internet radio station broadcasting live from Manchester, free to listen to anywhere in the world, with six channels: the flagship stream, 261 Heritage, 80s, 90s, Gold and 103. It is not the original 1974 station — that is a separate story, told below.

Piccadilly Radio went on air at five o'clock in the morning on 2 April 1974, broadcasting from Piccadilly Plaza on 261 metres medium wave. It was the fifth Independent Local Radio station in the country and the first anywhere in the north of England. Before that morning, Manchester had the BBC and nothing else.

For a generation it was simply what the radio sounded like here. It launched careers — Chris Evans, Mark Radcliffe, Gary Davies, Timmy Mallett and Karl Pilkington all passed through the building — and it kept the city company through the night in a way that almost no station does any more.

In 1988 it was split in two. The FM half became Key 103 and is now Hits Radio Manchester. The AM half kept the Piccadilly name for a while longer, became Piccadilly Gold, then Magic 1152, and finally fell silent on 26 April 2021. Nothing has broadcast on 1152 medium wave since.

Piccadilly Radio 261 is not that station, and we have never claimed to be. We are an independent, non-profit heritage project run by people who grew up listening. What we can do that a photograph cannot is make a noise: six live channels — the flagship stream, 261 Heritage, 80s, 90s, Gold and 103 — playing the music that made Manchester radio worth remembering, alongside a written history of the station itself.

• What happened to Piccadilly Radio? — the full story, frequency by frequency
• Presenters & DJs — who was on air, and who went on to national fame
• What is Key 103 called now? — and why it isn't Greatest Hits Radio
• Listen live — all six channels, free, wherever you are