BBC Sees Record Online Audiences For Live 8
The BBC has revealed record online audiences for its coverage of the Live 8 concerts last month, with an unprecedented 14.6 million page impressions over the course of three days marking the largest ever volume of traffic to a BBC Radio and Music website.
The Live 8 WAP site for mobile phones was also well received, generating 112,000 page impressions over the same period. Meanwhile, the BBC’s online coverage of the Glastonbury music festival also recorded high usage, as 13.4 million page impressions were logged in the fortnight of the festival.
The total usage figure for the Corporation’s online festival coverage, which spanned the websites of Radio 1, 6 Music, BBC Somerset, BBC THREE and the dedicated Music portal, was three times last year’s tally.
Away from its music coverage, the BBC’s sports content saw continued growth in usage, as Five Live Sports Extra’s commentary on Wimbledon and the NatWest One Day Series contributed to 295,000 hours of live online listening for the network during June – its largest monthly listening total for nine months.
Wimbledon also provided strong online growth for Five Live, which recorded its second highest number of monthly unique users and showed a significant improvement on last June.
The increases will be welcomed by online advocates, as well as the BBC itself, which is no stranger to market dominance in live online event coverage.
last year saw record online audiences flock to the BBC’s website for coverage of Euro 2004, with figures from online measurement specialists Nielsen//NetRatings showing the Corporation’s website to be far and away the most popular in the UK during the tournament (see Euro 2004 Tournament Attracts Record Online Audiences).
The rise in usage of online sports and music coverage is likely to be due to the increased penetration of broadband internet access, which was last month revealed to have overtaken dial-up access for the first time, allowing users to view streaming video at much higher speeds and in better quality.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show broadband connections in Britain totaling 50.7% of the nation’s internet connectivity, marking a sea change in the way consumers access the internet and paving the way for more rich-media content and bandwidth-intensive websites (see Broadband Penetration Exceeds Dial-Up For First Time).
Mobile Data Association: 01922 419600 www.mda-mobiledata.org