March Sees Record Numbers Of Online Listeners

The BBC’s online radio services continued to see large usage figures in March, as more listeners than ever tuned in using the latest streaming and podcasting technology.

More than 13 million hours of live and on demand online listening were recorded by the BBC during March, with over 9.5 million programmes listened to on demand. All of the Corporation’s networks enjoyed record on demand listening hours during March, totalling 5.1 million, while live listening through the internet hit a new high of 8 million hours.

Elsewhere, the BBC’s flagship youth station, Radio 1, saw record page impressions on its website – a total of 72 million during March, driven largely by online support for Comic Relief and the Chris Moyles Red Nose Rally minisite in particular.

The site, plotting Moyles’ progress across the country via his mobile phone, generated nearly 13 million page impressions during March, helping to fuel on demand listening and push the total of requests past 400,000.

Elsewhere, more than 100,000 listeners downloaded BBC radio programmes via the Corporation’s fledgling podcast service, taking the total number of downloads to date past 460,000. The BBC recently extended the range of its podcast-enabled programmes to include Radio 4’s flagship Today programme as well as selected Radio 1 speech content (see NewsLine).

The Corporation now carries a total of 22 podcasts, while Virgin Radio recently became the UK’s first commercial broadcaster to use the technology, funding the venture through the first example of podvertising (see Virgin Makes Podvertising First With Pete And Geoff).

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk