History
Until 2003, Phantom operated as a pirate station, staying on air the majority of the time, apart from outages caused by frequency collisions with newly licenced stations, fear of raids by Comreg, and once, the theft of their transmission equipment from Three Rock Mountain. Since 2003, they have operated as an internet radio station, and under two temporary radio contracts (2003 and 2004) from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.
Funding for Phantom during their pirate era came from sponsorship and advertising from local bands and promoters and even contributions from station staff.
A number of times during this period, the station went off air for licence applications. After two successful temporary licenses, Phantom applied for an alternative rock license offered by the BCI for Dublin in July 2004. They finally won a licence for an alternative rock station for Dublin in November 2004, beating the Zed FM consortium, Xfm and two other applicants.
Phantom's expected launch was delayed due to a legal challenges against the BCI regarding the license from Scrollside Ltd./Zed FM. An unsuccessful challenge to the High Court was followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court which was rejected on 6 April 2006. Phantom returned to the airwaves on the 31 October 2006, broadcasting on 105.2 FM.
Phantom 105.2 won the award for best music driven local station at the 2007 PPI Awards.
In 2010, Communicorp took a 30% stake and the station was relocated to Marconi House in January 2011 where it shares facilities with Today FM and Newstalk. A number of redundancies resulted from the move and cost cutting including the redundancies of Marketing Manager Brian Daly and Traffic Manager Laura Lee Conboy along with the resignation of Chief Executive Ger Roe and the dismissal of General Manager Simon Maher. Ricky Geraghty has replaced Ger Roe as CEO and Keith Walsh has replaced Fiona Scally as Programme Director.
In August 2012 it was announced that a number of weekend presenters would be leaving the station in a bid to cut costs. They include Pearl, Dee Reddy, Shane Galvin, James Byrne and Derek Byrne. Co-host of Pure Morning, Michelle Doherty will also leave in mid-September to pursue an acting career.
Read more about this topic: Phantom FM
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