Magic's Fox seizes London crown

Magic's Neil Fox has leapfrogged Capital rival Johnny Vaughan and Heart's Jamie Theakston and Harriet Scott to become the number one commercial breakfast show in London. The Magic breakfast DJ helped take Emap's "more music, less talk" station through the barrier of reaching 2 million listeners a week for the first time, and cemented its position as the number one station in the capital, a title it has held for the past three quarters in a row.

Fox had 885,000 listeners each week in the third quarter of this year, 5,000 more than Vaughan and 75,000 more than Theakston and Scott between the hours of 6am and 9am, according to Rajar figures released today. The victory would have been all the sweeter for the Magic DJ, who lost out in the race to succeed his former colleague Chris Tarrant in the breakfast hot seat at Capital three years ago. It is the first time Fox has taken the London breakfast show crown. He has increased Magic's breakfast audience by 50% since he took over the slot two years ago. However, Capital claimed Vaughan remained the number one breakfast host when his show's new slot, between 6.30am and 10am, was taken into account.

Overall, Magic had 2.03m listeners in the capital, up from 1.96m in the previous quarter and 1.64m in the same period last year. Global Radio's Heart remains in second place among the commercial stations in terms of reach, with 1.95m listeners, up from 1.81m in the previous quarter and 1.71m in 2006. In terms of audience share in London, Magic and Heart are neck and neck with 6.2% each, unchanged from the previous quarter. Capital also put on listeners, up to 1.71m from 1.52m the previous quarter and 1.46m the same time last year. The GCap station reclaimed third place in London in terms of market share from Emap's dance station Kiss, with a 4.7% share of the audience, up from 4.1% the previous quarter but flat year on year. Kiss had 1.59 million listeners, a 4.3% share of the market. It was up from 1.51m listeners the previous quarter and 1.32m the same time last year. GCap's Xfm had 557,000 listeners, down 50,000 from the previous quarter but up slightly year on year. However, the new music station - which has axed DJs from its daytime schedule - saw its share of the audience slump by nearly half, from 2% the previous quarter to just 1.2% in the space of three months. Global's London talk station, LBC, was also down around 50,000 listeners on the quarter to 586,000. Year on year it was down marginally from 594,000, a 3.1% share. LBC's talk rival, BBC London, had 518,000 listeners, up 70,000 on the previous quarter, a 1.4% share of the market. GCap's Choice had 611,000 listeners, up from 500,000 the previous quarter, a 2% share.