LONDON (ShareCast) - Radio firm GCap Media saw its London station Capital 95.8 fall behind Kiss for the first time, according to the listening figures published by Rajar.

First quarter figures showed Capital's weekly reach was 1.56m, up from the previous quarter's 1.52m. But Capital fell into fourth place behind Kiss, owned by Bauer Radio, which saw listening figures rise to 1.56m.

Bauer's Magic remained in number one spot in London with 1.97m listeners, followed by Global Radio's Heart, which rose to 1.85m. Both had 5.8% of the London market each.

GCap, which last month accepted a £375m cash offer from Global Radio, saw total reach fall 3% to 14.4m listeners. It's Xfm station continued to lose listeners, with total reach down 7% to 1m.

The Heart breakfast show remained on top spot ahead of Capital's equivalent, which added 1,000 extra listeners to total 943,000.

The Local Radio Company saw total listeners rise 2% to 925,000 per week. Total listening hours in the quarter were 7.6m and in line with result from the same period last year.

"I am pleased to announce that we have increased the number of listeners across our network of stations year on year," said Local Radio chairman Richard Wheatley.

“This good set of results supports our strategy of producing high quality local broadcasting across our network of stations,” he added.

Overall, Rajar’s figures showed that radio listening rose 1% to 45.4m. Digital radio, despite recent concerns about its viability, had 17.8% of the listening share, up 7% on the last quarter.

• News Channel