Magic puts spell on London crowd: Emap's Magic 105.4 leapfrogs over rivals to breathe down Capital FM's worried neck.(Radio)

Sociologists had calculated that January 24 would be the gloomiest day of the year, but three days later there was only good news to be found in the excited radio group announcements which accompany the Rajars.

As ever, some of the glad tidings rang truer than others, but while a few were simply putting a brave face on a survey which saw overall listening hours dip by 0.4%, others had genuine reason to smile.

Emap falls into the latter category with its Magic 105.4 having dramatically inserted itself between Capital FM and Heart in a London commercial tussle that had been widely held to be a two-horse race. The easy listening station's surging share takes it to within 0.1 of a percentage point of Capital, making the most of the ongoing defection of older listeners from the market-leader, post Tarrant.

But even as they sit just fractionally apart from each other at the head of the London market--Capital with 6.2% share and Magic with 6.1%--both sides declare themselves unfazed by the turn of events.

"We have gone up consecutively for six surveys in a row now, so we were expecting it to go up again," says Emap managing director of programming Mark Story. "We will do better next time."

His talent for understatement is matched by that of Capital FM managing director Keith Pringle, who appraises Magic as "a fairly solid radio station--has been for years".

But, while recent Rajars have seen Magic's share rise in the order of 0.1 or 0.2 percentage points, this quarter's 1.3 points hike is something else altogether, particularly as Heart, which briefly toppled Capital as London's favourite a year ago, shrank back to third place and a 5.3% share.