London Radio Market

When Heart FM launches in September radio listeners in London will have 15 different local commercial stations to choose from. This year alone will have seen 4 new stations enter the London radio market; Virgin, Viva, Heart FM and Premier. Over the next 2 years the Radio Authority will be advertising 4 more licences for London, bringing the total number of stations to 19.

Listeners can choose between music-based stations covering chart, gold, jazz, dance, country, rock and MOR, news and speech based services, Christian radio and foreign language stations. Capital FM, the veteran of the field, has fought off competition from the new stations, with a firmly established listenership and a weekly reach that has remained around the 3 million mark for the past few years. Of this year’s 4 newcomers Virgin probably had the easiest task, bringing with it listeners from its national AM service eager for the opportunity to listen in FM stereo. Heart FM will be targeting a similar audience to Virgin, when it goes on air in the first week in September. Like Virgin, Heart FM is not launching afresh, it is owned by the Crysalis group and will be based on the Midlands station of the same name. It will play adult contemporary music aimed at 25-44 year olds but with a slightly more upbeat feel for London.

The other 2 newcomers offer more specialist services. Premier, which began on June 10th, is a Christian station owned by a charitable trust. While Viva, part of Golden Rose Communications, will be a contemporary music and speech- based service aimed at women.

Of the new FM London licences to be advertised over the next 2 years, one will cover the whole of Greater London while the others will be smaller licences for the East, South East and South West. Interest in these new licences has already come from GWR and the holiday and magazine group Saga.