Last updated: August 2026
Key 103 is now called Hits Radio Manchester. Bauer Media announced the change on 18 April 2018, and the new name went live on 4 June 2018. It still broadcasts on 103 FM across Greater Manchester — same frequency, different name.
Where Key 103 came from
Key 103 did not appear out of nowhere. It was born from the break-up of Piccadilly Radio.
By the late 1980s, regulators were pushing stations holding both an AM and an FM frequency to stop broadcasting the same thing on both and run two separate services instead. Piccadilly did that at midday on Saturday 3 September 1988. The FM frequency became Key 103, with a contemporary music format aimed at a younger audience. The AM frequency, 1152, kept the Piccadilly name.
The "103" came from the frequency, which the station had only been using since early 1987 — before that, Piccadilly's FM signal sat at 97.0 MHz, and moved during a national reorganisation of the FM band. Had that reshuffle gone differently, Manchester might have spent thirty years listening to Key 97.
Thirty years on 103 FM
Key 103 ran under that name for very nearly three decades and became a Manchester institution in its own right — a station that people who were too young for Piccadilly still grew up with. For a lot of listeners, Key 103 is the memory, not Piccadilly.
The rebrand in June 2018 folded it into Bauer's national Hits Radio network, aimed at a 25–44 audience. The local name went; the frequency stayed.
The bit that confuses everybody
There are two Manchester stations descended from Piccadilly Radio, and people mix them up constantly. Here is the split:
- The FM side — Piccadilly Radio FM → Key 103 (1988) → Hits Radio Manchester (2018)
- The AM side — Piccadilly Radio 1152 → Piccadilly Gold → Piccadilly 1152 → Magic 1152 (around 1999–2000) → Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West
So Greatest Hits Radio is not the new name for Key 103. They are two different stations that happen to share a grandparent. If you search for Piccadilly Radio, Google will often show you Greatest Hits Radio — and that is the AM lineage, not the Key 103 one.
One more thing worth knowing: the AM transmitter that carried the original Piccadilly service was switched off on 26 April 2021. Nothing has broadcast on 1152 medium wave in Manchester since.
Can you still hear the old Key 103?
Not as it was. The name, the jingles and the presenter line-up all belong to the archive now.
That is roughly why this station exists. Piccadilly Radio 261 is an independent, non-profit heritage project — we are not the original station, not connected to Bauer, and we do not claim to be. But we do run four live channels, including Piccadilly 103, built around the sound that 103 FM was known for.
If you want the whole story from the beginning, read what happened to Piccadilly Radio.
Sources
Dates 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, and the Independent Local Radio archive. If you worked at Key 103 or Piccadilly and something here is wrong, please tell us and we will put it right.