GfK has an electronic wristwatch that records the radio stations listened to by the wearer.Kelvin Mackenzie’s talkSPORT, a station owned by his Wireless Group, received a massive uplift from the GfK study. The station registered 8.1 million listeners a week, making it the biggest national commercial station – Rajar gave it 2.2 million listeners. Mr Mackenzie has long complained that Rajar is underestimating his station’s reach.Rajar was quick to dismiss the GfK report. Jane O’Hara, managing director of Rajar, said: “While the GfK research may be of interest to certain sectors of the media industry, its release will have no effect on Rajar’s current research methodology and reporting format.”In television, where GfK includes out of home viewing (Barb works on programmes seen in the home), Sky News and Sky Sports 2 more than doubled their audiences, at 16.5 million and 8.9 million respectively.GfK conducted its research in a six-week period in March and April.

It said that the Iraq war during that time will have boosted audiences for the news and talk broadcasters.. Emap yesterday ruled out spinning off its radio assets, saying that it would use cash to make radio acquisitions. New legislation, now on its way through Parliament, will allow the big radio groups to merge for the first time.Tom Moloney, delivering his first set of results as Emap’s chief executive, said of the speculation: “That’s something we could never see the sense of In radio, cash is king … cash makes more sense.”Mr Moloney said that “we’d like to have a bigger radio group”, and that Emap had “£500m plus” of funding to make an acquisition. That would be enough to buy any of the other leading radio operators: Capital Radio, GWR and Chrysalis.Gary Hughes, the finance director, added: “You need cash to buy companies.

People distrust the value of paper.”Capital, GWR and Chrysalis would probably need to forge all-paper transactions, but the two Emap executives said that the radio sector’s inflated shares would not be acceptable as currency for deals.Analysts believe that radio shares are too highly rated, trading on forward multiples of 25 or 30, and that the relative valuations of companies in the sector would also prevent deals, with some too highly rated for their size.Mr Moloney said Emap was the best placed for radio consolidation “Eventually all roads lead to Emap,” he said. “We are the largest plc, we dominate the north of England, and we have great strength of digital radio.”However, he said radio consolidation would not necessarily take the form of a full merger of two big groups, given the problems of getting such deals past competition regulators.”I don’t think it will be a simple, clean deal. It’s going to be messy and patchy,” he said.For the year ended 31 March, Emap reported that underlying turnover grew 3 per cent, while normalised pre-tax profit jumped 16 per cent to £175m. The company’s magazines include FHM, the men’s title, and Heat, a celebrity gossip publication.Mr Moloney said that Emap was again considering expansion in the US, following its disastrous acquisition of Petersen in 1999 – the business was later sold at a £500m loss. However, this time it would be an “organic” move, such as a stable-mate for FHM, which is already published successfully in the US, or launching some FHM-branded products.He said that Emap was now in a “growth phase”, following the stability that the company needed to recover from the Petersen deal..

The Ministry of Defence has belatedly sanctioned an official investigation into the disappearance of two members of an ITN camera crew during the war in Iraq. For more than two months, colleagues of the missing men have been scouring Iraq in an effort to locate them. Mr Lloyd was found dead in Iraq and brought home.The ITN investigation has been hampered by a lack of co-operation from the military authorities. ITN executives wrote to the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, to complain that British forces – who control the area of Iraq where the men went missing – had said they were unable to assist. Mr Hoon responded by saying that he could not get involved without evidence of a war crime.But last night, the MoD confirmed that the Royal Military Police had been instructed to start an investigation.