Heart FM, in conjunction with the Northern Midlands council, will host the community meeting in Longford on Thursday, June 20, to gauge whether there is enough interest - and volunteers - to bring the station back in to operation.

The station was established as a community radio station for the Northern Midlands region in 2002, originally broadcasting from a studio in Poatina. In 2009, a studio was also established on Wellington Street at Longford.

However the station's committee decided to cease operation in July 2012, due to a lack of revenue and consistent sponsorship representative.

MORE FROM THE NORTHERN MIDLANDS

"We just want to see if there is enough community interest to actually get the station up and running again," said Northern Midlands council mayor Mary Knowles.

"It needs to have someone who is enthusiastic and wants to drive it. We need the volunteers who would like to be a part of whatever they do and the programming."

For the station to operate sustainably, volunteers are needed across a wide range of roles including in management, announcing and programming, promotions and sales, tech, IT, administration and grant writing.

"We have had meetings in the past where we did have quite a lot of interest and we had people who were willing to take on particular roles," Cr Knowles said.

"And we did have a volunteer manager who was prepared to come down from Sydney, but unfortunately something happened and he couldn't come so that didn't progress.

"A community radio station can be so good in promoting local things: local people local events, local sporting stories, all sorts of things."

The council voted to hold the meeting in April. In 2015, the station received a financial commitment to meet the cost of establishing a studio in Longford - those works would now need to be re-quoted.

Cr Knowles said if next week's meeting is deemed a success, a further community meeting will be taken to Campbell Town.

"We want it to reach the whole of the Northern Midlands, so if there is interest from down in the southern area, that would be great as well. We would like volunteers from everywhere," she added.

"We've got volunteers that go to other community radio stations out of our municipality because they see how worthwhile it is."

The meeting will be held on Thursday, June 20, from 6pm in the Supper Room of the Longford Town Hall.

While you're with us, you can now sign up to receive breaking news updates and daily headlines direct to your inbox. Sign up here.