BBC Radio 1 has come under fire from its biggest commercial rival for playing too many Top 30 hits and failing to break enough new acts. Unfair attack or guilty as charged?

Ashley Tabor, the founder of Heart and Capital's parent, Global Radio, and Global Group chief executive, described Radio 1's daytime playlist as "very, very mainstream" and accused it of playing too many chart songs, which are the staple diet of commercial radio – including Heart and Capital.

The BBC director of audio and music, Tim Davie, responding to Tabor's comments at last week's Radio Festival, said the breadth of the Radio 1 (and Radio 2) playlist was "in a different dimension statistically" to commercial radio.

"Statistically but not in reality," replied Tabor, only somewhat obliquely. So how do the stats – and the facts – add up?

Matt Deegan, the creative director of the radio and digital consultancy Folder Media (and boss of the digital children's radio station Fun Kids) has helpfully crunched some numbers on this.

He compared (most of) the songs played on the two stations between 6am to 7pm in the week to 17 October.

Both stations played a similar number of tracks – 1,068 (Radio 1), and 1,081 (Capital). But unique songs at Capital were just 83 (meaning they played the same songs more often) compared with 443 at Radio 1. They had 49 – more than half of Capital's playlist – in common.

Those 49 shared songs represented 26.3% of Radio 1's daytime airplay, against 79.4% for Capital. "In other words, 73.7% of Radio 1's daytime airplay has no crossover with Capital whatsoever – to me that makes Radio 1 pretty distinctive," reckons Deegan.

Radio 1's most played 30 songs make up 39% of its daytime airplay. Too much?

"If you do the same thing with Capital, the figures – the plays of their top 30 songs – represent 73% of their output," says Deegan. "Yes, it's much higher – but the two stations are there to do very different jobs.

"Overall, Radio 1 is musically a much more distinctive listen and it's clearly concentrating on songs that one of its main commercial radio competitors isn't playing. It's definitely creating its own hits and then reaping the benefits of continuing to play those tunes."

Radio 1 broadly agrees with most of the Deegan figures. It says Capital's daytime repetition rate is four times that of Radio 1, and in the same October week says it added nine new songs to its playlist, compared with one on Capital (Take That's The Flood). It describes its playlist as "60% new music and 55% UK artists".

Tabor said he wants to see Radio 1 breaking at least 10 new acts next year. The station, for its part, says it has played a "major part" in breaking acts including the xx, Mumford & Sons, Plan B, Biffy Clyro, Eliza Doolittle, Marina & the Diamonds, Florence & the Machine, Tinie Tempah and Laura Marling, plus newer artists such as Devlin, Katy B and Chase & Status.

Radio 1 also points out that it's not just which songs are on the playlist, but when they are put there. And it flags up station strands and initiatives such as In New Music We Trust, BBC Introducing and its various social action campaigns.

One industry executive I spoke to at the festival was in no doubt that there was too much crossover between Capital and Radio 1. And yet the BBC Trust member David Liddiment, when questioned about Tabor's claims, said there was "no evidence" to suggest that.

Should Radio 1 be doing more for new music? Should Capital spend more time on its own playlist than other people's? And do the statistics match your reality?