BBC iPlayer has a record Christmas
After breaking the 200 million requests-per-month mark for the first time in October, BBC’s iPlayer continued its excellent performance over Christmas with 77 million requests for TV and radio programmes throughout the festive period (22 Dec – 1 Jan, excluding Virgin Cable data which is not yet available) – a 32% increase on the same period the previous period.
During the festive season last year, 2 January was the best day BBC iPlayer ever had with 5.4 million TV programmes requested. This year 1 January was the most popular for TV viewing with 6.7 million requests for TV programmes.
Doctor Who – The Snowmen was the most popular programme, followed by Eastenders and Miranda. Other top performing programmes were Outnumbered, Call the Midwife and Merlin.
Writing on his blog, iPlayer head, Dave Price, said: “As I’ve talked about before one of our key goals for iPlayer in 2012 was to take it beyond the PC and onto a host of different devices from mobile smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and games consoles. We want to make it as easy as possible to watch and catch up on your favourite programmes.
“It appears the UK was particularly generous with gifts this Christmas! We’ve witnessed a significant spike in users installing iPlayer on new tablets and smartphones with devices such as the Nexus 7, iPad and Kindle Fire HD proving popular.
“Throughout the festive period we saw more and more viewers accessing programmes on mobiles, tablets and internet-connected TVs.”
Mobiles and tablets
Requests increased on Christmas Day +40% on tablets and +66% on mobiles compared with Christmas Eve.
Mobile and tablet viewing requests grew even further on Boxing Day and saw another catch-up viewing peak on New Year’s Day.
During the whole festive period the iPlayer app was downloaded nearly one million times – with almost 300,000 downloads on Christmas Day alone.
By the end of 2012 the iPlayer app had been downloaded nearly 13 million times.
Popular programmes on mobiles and tablets
While Doctor Who was in the top three most popular programmes for all types of device, the Christmas Day EastEnders was number one on mobiles and tablets across the festive period.
Some comedy programmes such as Outnumbered also ranked more highly on mobiles and tablets. But people still want to watch TV on a TV and with increasing numbers of TVs being connected to the internet iPlayer requests were also strong on these devices throughout this period.
On internet connected TVs
These devices followed the overall pattern of viewing on PCs, since they saw stiff competition from live TV screens – dipping on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and picking up for catch-up viewing from 27 onwards. Requests from PCs saw their largest peak on New Year’s Day.