On 4 December 1984, the station officially began broadcasting to a much larger area. Having resigned the original franchise early, Managing Director Mike Boothroyd, Programme Controller Will Venters, Chief Engineer Steve Bowley, Sports Editor Tony Delahunty and the rest of the team at Pennine House were thrilled to win back their franchise, which transformed the station from one of the UK's smallest Independent Local Radio (ILR) stations to one of the biggest. Pennine was broadcasting to Bradford, West Leeds and the Aire Valley on 235 m MW/1278 kHz AM and 96 MHz VHF, and had new transmitters at Vicar's Lot overlooking the new additional area of Kirklees and Calderdale on 196 m MW/1530 kHz AM and 103.4 MHz VHF. In August 1985, 103.4 was changed to 102.5 as the first of the ILR frequency changes under the mid-1980s "Geneva convention" to lump ILR and BBC local FM frequencies into sub-bands. A month later the 103.4 frequency started to relay the new Doncaster signal of Radio Hallam.
