Retune your digital radios

Published 24th May 2016

Digital radio listeners in Manchester are being urged to retune their digital radios on Wednesday morning (25th May 2016) to ensure they continue to get a clean-feed following engineering works.

The essential maintenance was carried out to boost and change the frequency of existing digital radio transmitters in the Manchester area and switching on two new transmitters, which will bring the area’s 11 local stations to 400,000 more listeners for the first time.

A number of the region's top presenters - including Key 103’s Mike Toolan - will gather at the Hilton to press the big green retune switch to signal the importance for listeners to retune their DAB digital radios to continue to receive to all of Manchester’s local stations on DAB.

The digital radio retune and expansion will take place at 0600am on the morning of Wednesday 25 May.

Retuning will enable those listeners in the new expansion areas to receive local radio stations on DAB for the first time. Retuning a DAB digital radio is a simple process. Listeners simply press the auto tune or auto scan button on their DAB digital radio or go into the radio’s menu and press auto tune. More information can be found at:

The boosting and expansion of the digital radio signal will expand local DAB coverage to 95% of Manchester area households and bring local DAB digital radio to over 400,000 listeners in the Northern and Eastern part of the Manchester area. There will be an increase in power at the major Winter Hill transmitter and the switch-on of two new digital transmitters - one at Littleborough expanding local DAB coverage to listeners in Littleborough and Rochdale, and a second in Saddleworth expanding coverage for listeners in Saddleworth, Oldham and the East of Manchester.

Dee Ford, Group Managing Director Radio Bauer Media said: “Bauer is the biggest commercial radio operator in digital listening and we are thrilled to bring Manchster’s listeners three unique stations in Key 103, Key 2 and Key 3. Collectively we’re offering a wide variety of music, combined with local speech content that reflect the varied lives of our listeners, alongside two of our flagship digital brands, KISS FRESH and Absolute Radio 90s. It’s fantastic that even more listeners will now be able to hear our stations on DAB digital radio and we urge all listeners to retune their radios to stay tuned to us.”

Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, said: “The digital radio retune in Manchester is great news for both listeners and Manchester’s local radio stations. Government is committed to rolling out DAB digital radio, bringing listeners around the UK greater access, better coverage and an even wider variety of content."

Paul Eaton, Director of Digital Radio, Arqiva, said: “I am delighted that the local DAB coverage expansion programme is continuing with Manchester being the latest area to receive a digital boost. We’re proud of our role in expanding local DAB coverage as we continue working towards commercial radio FM coverage equivalence by the end of the year.”

The new digital transmitters have been built by communications infrastructure company Arqiva and are part of an industry and Government programme of work that aims to expand the coverage and listening to DAB digital radio. Government, BBC and commercial radio have agreed plans to build a further 182 local DAB transmitters to extend local DAB coverage to more than 90% of the population which will bring eight million listeners across the UK into coverage and will add over 4,160 miles of roads.