Sara Cox has held on to her breakfast audience

Radio 2 now has a 13.6% share of the audience - compared with 12.8% in the previous year - which the BBC says strengthens its position as the UK's most listened-to radio station.

Overall, the BBC has a 51.7% share of the radio audience, against commercial and other stations - up from 51.3% the previous year.

Radio 1 fall

Its director of radio and music, Jenny Abramsky, said: "It's good news across the board and I'm thrilled that Radio 2 and BBC local and national services have done so well."

BBC Radio 1 saw its adult audience fall to 10.7 million, down almost 600,000 over a year.

But breakfast show host Sara Cox remains steady with seven million listeners each morning - down just 20,000 on the figure she inherited from Zoe Ball 12 months ago.

Radio 3 remains steady with two million listeners and a share of 1.2%, as did its commercial classical rival Classic FM (six million listeners, 4.7% share).

Radio 4 fell slightly to 8.8 million, and has a share of 10.8%, compared with 11% the previous year.

Sport competition

Capital favourite: Chris Tarrant maintains his lead

Radio 5Live has 5.5 million listeners - down from its record figure of six million.

After a year of aggressive competition from independent station talkSPORT, its share fell from 4.4% to 4.1%.

But talkSPORT itself failed to show a rise - recording a loss of just under 100,000 instead in its first year as an all-sports station.

Virgin Radio - which last week decided to revert to its roots as a rock station - lost 500,000 listeners to its national AM frequency, and now has 2.5 million listeners and a 1.4% share.

In London, Chris Tarrant's Capital FM breakfast show continues to be the most popular morning programme, with over two million listeners - one million more than Sara Cox on Radio 1.

This is despite stiff competition on London's relatively crowded airwaves, and rumours that Tarrant is now considered "too old" by Capital's young listeners.

One of Tarrant's rivals - Kiss 100 presenter Bam Bam - last month launched a website, ChrisTarrant.com, asking his listeners to guess when the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? presenter will leave his Capital breakfast slot. The one who gets the right date wins �1,000.