History
The station was originally known as Lantern Radio, taking its name from the local coastline, known as "the Lantern Coast" - smugglers would lure ships onto the rocks of the North Devon coast with lanterns, causing the ships to run aground and thus be able to be plundered.
Originally owned by a consortium of local businessmen and businesswomen, Orchard Media (the owners of Somerset's Orchard FM) purchased the station during the mid 1990s,
GWR Group purchased the group in 1999 and later merged with the Capital Radio Group to form GCap Media. In November 2005, it was announced that GCap's local radio stations in the South West, including Lantern FM, were to be sold, as they lay outside the company's primary target area. However, no acceptable offer was made for the stations, and the sale was abandoned. GCap was itself later taken over by Global Radio.
Initially broadcasting from studios in Bideford, the station moved in 2000 to studios in Roundswell Business Park in Barnstaple, where the station's breakfast and drivetime shows were produced until its closure. Lantern FM was rebranded on 23 March 2009 as part of Global Radio's Heart Network. By this time, the majority of the station's programming was networked from the Heart Network's main studios in Leicester Square, London.
Read more about this topic: Heart North Devon
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