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In London, Chrysalis' Heart FM took a market share of 6%, down on the 6.4% it achieved last quarter. Capital was a close second with 5.9%, much improved from the 5.1% that left it in third place last quarter.

GCap Media took radical action following that result, cutting ads and relaunching Capital in January. With Capital back on top of Heart in terms of listener reach in the fourth quarter, it has a solid base to build on. In addition, Johnny Vaughan pulled away from breakfast rival Jamie Theakston with 987,000 listeners to 918,000.

Magic, which has also challenged for the top spot, fell back in market share from 5.3% last quarter to 4.9%.

Emap will be disappointed with the fall given that it backed the station on TV and brought in higher profile presenters such as Neil Fox and Eamonn Holmes ahead of the quarter. After Fox's arrival, the number of Magic breakfast show listeners increased 6% to 682,000.

Commercial radio as a whole endured another quarter being squeezed by BBC stations. During the quarter both sectors added listeners but the BBC gained more listening hours, leaving it with its highest market share to date of 55.1% against commercial's 42.8%. A year ago, the equivalent figures were 54% versus 44.2%.

Although Radio 1 lost share from 9.4% to 9.2%, Radio 2 was up from 15.6% to 16% and Radio 4 from 11.5% to 11.8%.

BBC Radio 5 Live, not including its digital Sports Extra service was down from 4.6% to 4.2%, and national commercial sports station TalkSport profited, recording its biggest number of fourth-quarter listening hours to date at 19m, and holding on to its 1.8% market share.

The other two analogue national commercial stations also had good quarters. GCap's Classic FM increased its share from 4.1% to 4.3% and Scottish Media Group's Virgin increased from 1.5% to 1.6%.

Virgin's new teen-orientated digital-only station Virgin Radio Xtreme debuted with a reach of 82,000, too small to qualify for a meaningful market share figure.

Outside London's top three, Xfm had a miserable quarter that coincided with the departure of breakfast host Christian O'Connell and managing director Graham Bryce. Its share fell from 2% to 1.5% and its reach from 628,000 to 497,000.

However, other GCap stations enjoyed boosts with Choice FM climbing from 1.3% to 1.9% and Capital Gold from 1% to 2.1%.

Chrysalis' speech station LBC 97.3FM dropped from 2.9% to 2.5%.

Kiss FM, which Emap is gearing up to relaunch, had a solid quarter with share increasing from 3.5% to 3.7% and improved reach.

It was neck and neck with Virgin, up from 3.2% to 3.6%, which is likely to gain further next quarter from the arrival of O'Connell from Xfm.

Guardian Media Group's London station Smooth FM improved in share from 1.3% to 1.7%.

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