More Than 10 Million Households Now Use BBCi Services
More than 10 million UK households with Freeview and satellite television accessed BBCi’s digital interactive services during April and May 2004.
The latest quantitative study commissioned by the BBC and Teletext reveals that 53% of viewers in Freeview homes used the Corporation’s ‘always on’ BBCi interactive services during May, compared with 46% of satellite viewers during the same period.
The research shows that over 5 million adults with Freeview are aware of the name BBCi, of which 3.6 million used the services in April and May 2004. A further 6.6 million satellite households used BBCi services during the same period, suggesting that the approximate audience on both platforms was over 10 million.
The research comes at an important time for BBCi, which this week relaunched on the Freeview platform, offering viewers a service which is almost twice as fast as the previous application. Rahul Chakkara, controller of BBCi 24/7 services, said: “We recognise we need to offer a source which is as efficient and user-friendly service as possible so we have made changes to the application available on Freeview enabling viewers to access content much faster.”
He added: “The growing reach and usage of BBCi reflects what the audience have been telling us – they value an interactive service that is available on demand, complements programming, and is free. Our challenge now is to entice the rest of the digital public to use BBCi”.
Last month the Government ordered the BBC to redefine its recently rebranded online services following the conclusion of a wide-ranging review carried out by former Trinity Mirror chief executive, Philip Graf. The review gave the Corporation four months to respond to criticism that its vast internet operations do not fit within its general public service obligations (see Government Orders BBC To Redefine Online Services).
BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk
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