The station served a potential audience of around 292,000 people, including the key centres of Barrow-in-Furness, Kendal, Lancaster, Morecambe and Windermere, where the service area overlaps with sister station Smooth Lake District.

Under previous owners, The Bay was nominated for and won several industry awards, including the Station of the Year at the 2010 Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards,[1] and more recently, Arqiva's Breakfast Show of the Year in 2012.

[2] On 20 November 2017, CN Group announced The Bay would be sold to Global along with sister station Lakeland Radio - the sale was finalised by 1 December 2017.

The Bay's brand and programming was phased out during February 2018 and following a transition period, the station was relaunched as Heart North Lancashire and Cumbria at 6am on Monday 5 March 2018.

[6] Heart North Lancashire & Cumbria's studios in Lancaster closed with operations moving to Manchester.