The BBC’s on-demand platform, iPlayer, has relaunched today after being rebuilt “from the ground up” to ensure it is fit for the future, the Corporation has announced.
Tony Hall, the BBC’s director general said the new iPlayer will be a vast improvement on the original, which has been downloaded over 28 million times and averages 10 million requests every day.
“You’ll be able to find so many more programmes you might like and I hope everyone enjoys the new design,” Hall said. “It’s just a first step to re-inventing BBC iPlayer, the best online television service in the world.
“Redesigned from the ground up, the new version of BBC iPlayer brings together a new look and feel with core functionality that is built for the future. It makes finding content simpler, discovering new content easier and allows more options for the curation of content.
“Playback is richer and the viewing experience is tailored to the device being used by the viewer.”
Launched on Christmas Day 2007, iPlayer is now available on over 1,000 devices across four screens and over 10 billion programmes have been requested in the six years since launch, with over three billion of these coming in 2013 alone.
Rolling out from today as an opt-in preview across some smart TVs and computer, tablet and mobile browsers – with mobile and tablet apps due to follow in the coming months – the new BBC iPlayer has a “more advanced recommendations” feature, “smarter search” and “image-led navigation”.
The BBC has also said the rebuild will come with new content, including drama, comedy and history programming.
The news comes less than a week after Tony Hall announced that its flagship youth and comedy channel, BBC Three, will become wholly available online via iPlayer, where a large proportion of its programming already premieres.
Hall has also said that the licence fee should be extended to include people watching content via iPlayer in future.
Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention in February, Hall said there is “room for modernisation so that the fee applies to the consumption of BBC TV programmes, whether live on BBC One or on-demand via the iPlayer.”
Lord Hall made a strong defence of the £145 annual licence fee during his speech, which is due for renewal in 2016, saying that critics who argue the fee is a “dinosaur from a pre-digital age, doomed to inevitable extinction” were wrong.
Currently, anyone who watches or records traditional TV broadcasts must pay the fee, however, shows watched via the BBC’s iPlayer are currently exempt.
It is estimated that 500,000 UK households do not have a television set but watch BBC programmes on-demand on the iPlayer
