A national jazz radio station has attracted record audiences after the owners announced its closure and replaced the DJs with a musical loop.

GCap Media closed thejazz, a digital station playing bebop, blues, traditional and modern jazz, after corporate chiefs said that the venture was unprofitable.

Presenters, including Margherita Taylor, Jamie Cullum and David Jensen, were told that their shows had been axed. Thejazz became a “ghost station”, running pure jazz on a 24-hour loop to web and digital radio listeners.

However, the station's closure prompted a backlash from music fans. The latest Rajar figures show the “dead” station attracted a record audience of 407,000 listeners, an increase of 40,000, during the last quarter.

A Facebook campaign has been started to revive the station, which ceased broadcasting finally at midnight, March 31 with Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin.

The station was launched two years ago promising to “do for jazz what Classic FM has done for classical music, in making the genre accessible to a nationwide audience”.

The latest figures suggest there is an audience for a specialist jazz station and the dormant brand may be snapped up by rival networks.

However, Fru Hazlitt, GCap Media chief executive, said that digital radio “was not an economically viable growth platform” for the company. GCap has accepted a £375 million buyout bid from Global Radio, its rival.

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