Despite continued popular programming from the BBC in March, iPlayer requests were down by 44 million compared with February.
March saw 255 million requests registered, with a weekly average of 57 million. The first week of the month peaked with Top Gear’s sixth episode bringing in 2.2 million viewers, while The Voice battle round episode brought in an audience of 1.2 million.
Top Gear continued to impress, netting the second highest figure for March with 1.5 million requests. The opening episode of Poldark, a remake of the 1970s classic, was a popular addition to the BBC’s schedule, reaching 1.2 million viewers.
Comic Relief was as popular as ever, with The Comic Relief Bake Off bringing in over 1 million requests, while the clip of the Little Britain sketch where Lou (David Walliams) met Stephen Hawking entertained 500,000.
Radio requests remained static at 57 million, whereas TV requests dropped from 242 million to 199 million. However, the BBC said that measurement issues in March meant it was unable to capture a large volume of TV and radio requests.
Combined viewing figures from computers were up from February with 93 million people using a computer at least once to watch a show or listen to the radio. Whilst viewing numbers from tablet and mobile devices remained almost the same, TV-only requests from computers reached 68 million, the highest level since March last year.
Demographically, there was little change, with iPlayer usage split evenly between men and women. The age of users has also remained consistent over the last few years, with 16-34 and 25-54 year olds sharing 38% and 39% of total iPlayer requests, respectively.
