Last updated: August 2026
Piccadilly Radio launched in Manchester on 2 April 1974 and never really disappeared — it divided. On 3 September 1988 the station split in two: Key 103 took the FM frequency, while the Piccadilly name carried on down at 1152 AM. Both halves survived under new names. The AM signal finally fell silent on 26 April 2021.
5am, Tuesday 2 April 1974
Piccadilly Radio began broadcasting from studios in Piccadilly Plaza, in the middle of Manchester, at five o'clock on the morning of 2 April 1974. The first record played was Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, introduced by Roger Day.
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. Piccadilly was the first commercial radio voice the city had ever had, and for a generation of listeners it became the default sound of the place.
261 metres — where the number comes from
The station launched on 261 metres medium wave, which worked out at 1151 kHz, alongside 97.0 MHz on FM. That "261" became shorthand for the station itself, printed on stickers, sung in jingles and repeated between every record.
The medium wave frequency shifted slightly to 1152 kHz when European broadcasting frequencies were realigned in 1978. In early 1987, a national reorganisation of the FM band moved Piccadilly's FM signal from 97 to 103 MHz — a detail that mattered more than anyone realised at the time, because it handed the station the name its FM half would carry for the next thirty years.
3 September 1988: the split
By the late 1980s the Government and the IBA were pushing stations that held both an AM and an FM frequency to stop simulcasting and run two separate services instead, on the grounds that it gave listeners more choice.
Piccadilly did exactly that on Saturday 3 September 1988. At midday, Key 103 launched on the FM frequency with a contemporary music format aimed at a younger audience. The original service continued on 1152 AM, keeping the Piccadilly name.
This is the moment most people are really asking about. Piccadilly Radio did not close down in 1988. It was split in half, and only one half kept the name.
What became of the AM half
The AM service gradually moved towards older music and became Piccadilly Gold. In the mid-1990s it was renamed Piccadilly 1152 as the playlist drifted from golden oldies towards a mix of classics and easier contemporary music.
Around 1999–2000, owner EMAP folded it into its national oldies brand and it became Magic 1152, matching Magic stations elsewhere in London and the north. That was the end of the Piccadilly name on air. The station later became part of Bauer's Greatest Hits Radio network, and the AM transmission ceased on 26 April 2021, moving to DAB and FM only.
After forty-seven years, there was no longer anything at 1152 on the medium wave dial.
What became of the FM half
Key 103 ran on 103 FM for three decades and became a Manchester institution in its own right. On 18 April 2018 Bauer Media announced it would be rebranded, and on 4 June 2018 Key 103 became Hits Radio Manchester. We have written that part up separately: what is Key 103 called now.
So if you are looking for the frequency Piccadilly Radio launched on in 1974, the honest answer is that the FM side is now Hits Radio Manchester and the AM side no longer transmits at all.
So what actually happened to Piccadilly Radio?
Nothing dramatic, and that is rather the point. There was no closure, no final broadcast, no moment where somebody pulled a plug. The station was split, renamed, absorbed, renamed again, and eventually the name simply stopped being used. Most listeners never heard it go.
What survives is the archive. Manchester Central Library holds over 1,800 tapes of the station's output — news, music, interviews and documentary recordings from the 1970s through to the 1990s — and the Manchester Digital Music Archive and Manchester Libraries have both done considerable work preserving them.
Where Piccadilly Radio 261 fits in
We are not the original station and we do not pretend to be. Piccadilly Radio 261 is an independent, non-profit heritage project: our archive material is presented for heritage and educational purposes, and our live channels are original present-day productions inspired by that era rather than recordings of it.
What we can offer that a photograph cannot is sound. You can listen to our live channels — 80s, 90s, Gold and 103 — or read more about this project and why we started it.
Sources
Dates and frequencies on this page are drawn from publicly documented radio history, including Wikipedia's articles on Hits Radio Manchester and Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, the Independent Local Radio archive, and the Manchester Libraries blog. If you spot something wrong — particularly if you were there — please tell us and we will correct it.