The battle to be London's number one commercial station, while far from over, has lost a competitor. While Heart 106.2 and Magic 105.4 both claim to be first choice of London listeners, there's no doubt that for now Capital Radio are well and truly out the race.
Capital has lost nearly 200,000 listeners in the past three months – over 10% of its reach – although a marginal increase in hours has meant market share has remained the same. The loss means that Capital is now over 300,000 listeners behind Heart 106.2 and over 450,000 behind Magic 105.4.
Magic remains the number one station in terms of reach, accounting for 1.969 million listeners, over 120,000 ahead of Heart 106.2 at 1.842 million. However Heart's improved average hours means the Global station records a market share of 6.2%, just 0.1% ahead of Magic.
Capital now finds itself heading up the second tier of London stations. With a reach of 1.517 million listeners, Capital is less than 90,000 ahead of Kiss 100 (1.429 million listeners) and just 0.5% ahead in terms of market share.
XFM 104.9 has lost a nearly 10% of its audience, dropping from 557,000 to 513,000 although average hours have improved to 5.6. 102.2 Smooth Radio finally has good news to post – GMG Radio's flagship station now has the best average hours in the commercial marketplace at 7.9, a jump of nearly two hours on last quarter.