Editing Wire FM (section)

===RSL broadcasts===
The move to FM saw a step change in the popularity of the station with the audience and advertisers. It was decided to repeat the broadcast during November 1994, and the decision was made to change the station name from WFMR to Warrington FM. It was renamed again as Wire FM, to reflect Warrington's wire manufacturing heritage.

At the beginning of 1995, [[Cheshire]] was added to the Radio Authority's list of locations where so-called 'Sallie' (Small Scale Alternative Location Licence) licences would be advertised. This brought new impetuous and further RSLs were run in June and November 1995. Throughout this period, programming followed a mainstream commercial format, along with regular community features and local news supplied by the [[Warrington Guardian]].

During 1995, with the licence application pending, the Wire FM management team had initially formed an alliance with the [[Marcher Radio Group]] to bid for Warrington. However, Marcher were dropped in favour of the Independent Radio Group [[Public limited company|PLC]] (IRG), following their formation and subsequent successful bid for Wigan and St. Helens as [[Wish FM]] by Tony Dewhurst and Jeff Graham, who also authored the licence application. By this point, Stephen Cooper had left the team, and Stephen Armstrong-Smith had joined IRG as their regional engineer.

During 1996, Cheshire was advertised as the location for two potential radio stations. The remaining members of Wire FM's management team, Philip Houltby and David Duffy, assembled the bid in conjunction with IRG's licence bid team consisting of [[New Zealand people|New Zealanders]] Kris Burford and Ande McPherson. Competition for the licence was expected to be strong and significant resources were allocated to the bid resulting in more than 250 letters of support being received and comprehensive research being undertaken and analysed by the most respected research organisations.