RALPH BERNARD, the chief executive of GCap, dismissed the two top managers at Capital Radio yesterday as he moved to stem falling revenues at the company and fight off rivals.

The commercial radio group announced that it had parted company with Capital’s managing director Keith Pringle and the programme director Nik Goodman.

The move comes just weeks after the group announced a 17 per cent drop in revenues in the first three months of this year, prompting analysts to call into question the tenure of Mr Bernard.

Steve Orchard, GCap’s operations director, said yesterday that the roles of the two men will be combined into one job and the new candidate would be announced “in the next week”.

Capital Radio, whose target audience is 25 to 34-year-old women, has faced increasing competition in recent years in London from Heart 106.2, Magic 105.4 and BBC Radio 1. The group said recently that it planned to relaunch Capital Radio and insisted yesterday that the departure of the two executives was part of this move.

Mr Orchard admitted that Capital Radio had lost market share to rivals and said that someone with “specific skills” and experience was needed to reinvigorate the station. However, he would not say what these skills were.

The group said that changes made at the station in January, where only two adverts in a row are played, have been welcomed by advertisers and GCap’s own research had been “encouraging”.

But Mr Orchard added that there was “still much to do at this critical time in order to take the station to the next level and attract new listeners”.

The two Capital Radio executives are not the first former Capital colleagues to leave. The exit of David Mansfield as GCap chief executive was followed by the departures of three of his former Capital colleagues — the commercial director Linda Smith, the operations director Paul Davies and Graham Bryce, the managing director of Choice and Capital Gold.

Mr Bernard has in the past denied that the departures of executives represented a putsch by GWR, which merged with Capital on a nil-premium basis. All three of GCap’s executive directors — Mr Bernard, Mr Orchard and the finance director Wendy Pallot — originally worked for GWR.

Capital Radio’s audience numbers are down from almost htree million in 2001 to 1.8 million this year. However, quarterly figures in February from Rajar, the radio industry body, showed that Capital’s share of the London commercial radio audience rose to

5.9 per cent, against 5.1 per cent in the previous quarter.

Recent Rajar figures showed that the BBC has built its largest lead over its commercial rivals. BBC radio had a 55 per cent share of the UK radio market in the final quarter of 2005, compared with 42.8 per cent for commercial stations.

BATTLE OF THE AIRWAVES IN LONDON

Capital Radio 95.8

Owner: GCap Chief executive: Ralph Bernard

Breakfast show presenter: Johnny Vaughan

Listeners Q4 2005 (Rajar): 987,000

Capital audience share Q4 2005: 5.9 per cent

GCap revenues: 13 per cent down in year to end of March, 17 per cent down in three months to end of March

Heart 106.2

Owner: Chrysalis Group

Chief executive: Richard Huntingford

Breakfast show presenter: Jamie Theakston

Listeners Q4 2005: 918,000

Heart audience share Q4 2005: 6 per cent

Chrysalis Group revenues: Predicts 10 per cent increase in radio revenues for March and April.

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