Emap’s Magic 104.5 today emerged as the winner in London’s hotly contested commercial radio market after leapfrogging Chrysalis Group’s Heart 106.2 and GCap Media’s Capital in the first three months of the year.

The news came as figures from Rajar, the industry body, showed that across the country, the BBC has opened up its largest ever gap over its commercial rivals, taking a record 55.5 per cent share in the first quarter.

This is up from 55.1 per cent in the previous three months and comes despite the publicly funded broadcaster losing more than half a million listeners from Radio One.

BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4 also lost market share during the period.

In London, Magic increased its share of the market to 7 per cent, to reach 1.87 million listeners during the quarter, up from a 4.9 per cent share in the previous period.

Magic’s improved performance follows a £1 million TV advertising campaign launched last year.

However, Veronika Pechlaner, an analyst for Goldman Sachs, noted that the year-on-year improvement "looks less impressive, moving from 6 per cent market share at Magic a year ago to 7 per cent".

"We expect no change to our numbers as we already expect Emap to outperform the radio market," she said.

Heart took second place in London with a 5.5 per cent share, down from 6 per cent. Capital Radio dropped to third place with 5.5 per cent, down from 5.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, despite halving the number of adverts it carries as part of a relaunch designed by a revamped management team to boost its popularity.

Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis Securities, said: "Although we were expecting Magic to overtake Capital 95.8FM, we were not expecting it to become the market leader in London - and by such a margin."

She added that Capital’s first-quarter performance had been "disappointing" but said it was too early to brand its new advertising policy a failure.

Jesper Jensen, an analyst at Cazenove, agreed that it was too early to pass judgment on Capital’s strategy.

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