LBC's late-evening interview and phone-in programme between 9 p.m. (later 10 p.m.) and 1 a.m. was called Nightline and at various times was hosted by Adrian Love, Robin Houston, Monty Modlyn, Jeremy Beadle and Tommy Boyd.

[citation needed] Originally owned by a consortium led by the Canadian Selkirk Communications of Vancouver, British Columbia with a 47% stake, LBC was sold in 1987, beginning a turbulent commercial history.

The new owners were media company Darling Downs, later renamed Crown Communications, owned by Australian entrepreneur David Haynes.

The prospective loss of the franchise brought Chelverton to the brink of collapse,[4] and London News Radio (soon itself taken over by Reuters) bought LBC to keep it on air until the official handover date of October 1994.

[9] On 13 January 2004, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair presented an hour-long phone-in show on the station, taking pre-booked calls from LBC 97.3 listeners.

[10][11][12] Mark Flanagan, the station's Managing Director, left Chrysalis in 2005 to set up a political consultancy company, and was replaced by David Lloyd.

[13] He introduced a podcasting service called LBC Plus, and a number of premium-rate promotional opportunities to replace falling advertising revenues experienced by the radio sector.

It became the subject of media controversy, first because her views were criticised as irresponsible by medical journalist Dr Ben Goldacre, and then because LBC and Global Radio threatened legal action against Goldacre for copyright infringement after he refused to remove the audio of the show from his blog, which resulted in its being made available at Wikileaks and elsewhere and the preparation of transcripts of the broadcast.

David Aaronovitch in The Times argued for "a class action against LBC for permitting a presenter to inflict her preposterous prejudices on her listeners, to the detriment of someone else's kids.

"[21] Norman Lamb MP tabled an Early Day Motion criticising Barnett and LBC for the likely effect of the broadcast on public health.

[23] On 30 January 2014, LBC announced its intention to begin broadcasting nationally on DAB at 7 a.m. on 11 February 2014 under a new slogan, "Leading Britain's Conversation", with new jingles composed by David Arnold and performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

[24] LBC took up the slot previously occupied by Jazz FM (and briefly Birdsong), and dropped the "97.3" from the station name to reinforce the notion that it now had national coverage.