Evans' behaviour 'cost Virgin £20m'

Chris Evans' "destructive" behaviour at Virgin Radio cost the station more than £20m over nearly three years, according to its owner, Scottish Media Group (SMG), the High Court was told yesterday.

Trevor Morse, called as an expert witness by the former DJ, disputed the claim, telling Mr Justice Lightman it was unfair to attribute Virgin Radio's losses to Mr Evans, who was sacked in July 2001 and is claiming breach of contract.

SMG is alleging that he was directly responsible for a drop in audience figures and, therefore, the huge losses from April 2000 until December 2002.

Mr Morse, an expert in commercial radio, said the market trend for AM waveband stations such as Virgin was largely to blame, with audiences declining sharply since 1998. FM stereo stations, with better sound quality, and a resurgent BBC Radio network, had taken a larger market share each year.

Virgin broadcasts on AM nationally, although it broadcasts the same programmes on FM in London.

When Mr Evans joined the station in 1997 there was a sharp rise in audience figures, but that was reversed in late 1998. Virgin's national AM service was responsible for almost all the audience decline before 2002, with the FM service holding up. The accelerated decline in Virgin Radio's FM audience did not happen until well after Chris Evans was sacked by SMG, Mr Morse said.

He said that Mr Evans' departure did damage the station's revenues to some extent, but that it was SMG's fault for sacking Mr Evans. "Taking into account the breakfast show collapse and the decline in Virgin's most important listener age group following the Chris Evans departure from Virgin, even if one is to take the SMG case at face value, one might wonder whether the cure was worse than the disease."

The case continues.