Heart attack: The rise of Heart 106.2

Once a minor player in London radio, Heart 106.2 is fast gaining ground on its rivals. Now, its breakfast show is even snapping at Chris Tarrant's heels, reports Louise Jury

Heart 106.2 has gone from nothing to a station that can dent the confidence of Capital, home of Chris Tarrant, in seven years. It may not be on the verge of toppling Tarrant quite yet, but the latest radio figures, released last week, showed that the rival breakfast show of Jono Coleman, who has recently joined by a co-presenter, Emma Forbes, has gained 119,000 listeners in the past 12 months, to make 862,000, while Tarrant has lost 300,00 listeners, with 1.6 million.

Perhaps more significant, the amount of time people spend listening to Heart has increased. Heart's audience in London now listens for 7.8 hours a week on average, compared with 7.3 a year ago. The figures for Capital are exactly the reverse.

"It's a huge thing for us. It means that in London, Heart's listeners are much more loyal to Heart than Capital's are to Capital. People like the product and they're listening for longer," says Steve Parkinson, Heart 106.2's managing director. "Capital has been around since the early 1970s, and in seven years, Heart is suddenly knocking on the door."

It is in the past couple of years that the real surge has come. Up until then, Parkinson admits, stations such as Magic, Heart and Virgin were widely seen as having considerable cross-over in terms of music and were enjoying pretty similar audience figures. But then, all of them began to focus more tightly on target listeners. Parkinson says that Heart went for women; Virgin, for men; and Magic, for anyone interested in easy listening. Kiss and Capital were left to battle it out for younger listeners.

Heart decided that to know its audience, it had to meet them. It set up "lifestyle workshops" where women came and chatted about their lives. Then, unusually, the station trained its presenters to talk about what the Heart 106.2 audience wanted to hear.

Finally, it embarked on a marketing campaign designed to imprint the Heart brand on the hearts and minds of the potential listeners. Posters, such as one showing young women watching a male stripper, suggested the two lifestyles of its primary audience: the so-called office angel, the Bridget Jones-type fun-loving singleton in her late twenties or early thirties, and the "new family" women with young kids. Everything, from the music to new presenters, was judged as to whether the target audience would approve.

And it has. Three years ago, Heart had a 4.6 per cent share of the London market; now, it has 6.3 per cent – or 11.5 per cent of those listening to commercial radio. Interestingly, 44 per cent of Heart's listeners are now men. "We were all much of a muchness at the end of 2000, but this branding has taken us into the next league," Parkinson says. "People love to talk about Kiss and Xfm being trendier, but Jono and Emma have 50 per cent more listeners than Bam Bam on Kiss."

Musically, Heart plays what is known as adult contemporary. "People who haven't sampled us think it's Phil Collins love songs, but it's more Abba and Kylie," Parkinson says. What's a hit and what is not is tested with a sample audience every two weeks. Jim Hicks, who is programming director for all the stations in the parent company, Chrysalis Radio Group, says that means music can be more targeted to what a particular audience in a particular area wants. "My understanding is, a lot of other radio groups go for centralised play-lists. We're extremely targeted."

Success in London is difficult, as it has about 50 competing stations. But it echoes the situation in the rest of the Chrysalis group, including its Galaxy brand and the original Heart, 100.7 Heart FM, in the West Midlands. In the figures released last week, Chrysalis's share of the market rose from 9.7 per cent to 10.4 per cent. Advertising revenue has also risen almost 25 per cent in the first nine months of the year in a market that is generally flat.

So, in the battle for domination in London, Heart is not popping open the champagne yet. But it now believes it is possible. Parkinson says he feels sorry for Capital. "It's great being the No 1 guy, but you're always at the top of the mountain, fighting everybody off it." And the view from the top can never have looked so precarious.