Troubled radio station MTR is likely to cease local broadcasting as early as tomorrow after a Supreme Court application to stop it taking content from a Sydney station failed this afternoon.

Documents tendered to the court detailed correspondence between the companies that own MTR and showed one party wanted a "lower cost management and staffing structure".

MTR presenter Steve Price. Credit:Jason South

A number of high-profile presenters appear on the station, including Steve Price, Andrew Bolt, Steve Vizard and Sam Newman.

In an email sent on November 5 by Russell Tate, chairman of Melbourne Talk Radio's half-owner Macquarie Radio Network (MRN), to Barrie Quick, CEO of the other half-owner, Pacific Star Network, Tate allegedly wrote: "As of next Friday at the latest we want MTR to either cease broadcasting or, if you require it to continue, to do so with revised programming and a very different and lower cost management and staffing structure."