Over 17m Shows Downloaded On iPlayer This Year
Up to 500,000 programmes are downloaded or streamed from the BBC’s iPlayer every day, and over 17 million have been streamed or downloaded on-demand in the application’s first seven weeks, according to new figures from the corporation.
Daily volumes have been increasing strongly during January and February and last week the total number of streams and downloads in a single day broke through the half a million barrier.
During January, more than 2.2 million people watched a programme on BBC iPlayer, with approximately 11 million TV programmes streamed or downloaded on-demand.
This complemented the 15.9 million radio downloads during January (rising from 13.4 million in December) and totalling 27 million requests for TV and radio programmes.
The research reveals that the number of visitors to the whole of bbc.co.uk has also increased by over a quarter in the past year.
There was an average of 20 million UK visitors weekly to bbc.co.uk across January, marking an increase of 29% on the corresponding period in 2007, with the BBC saying this was driven chiefly by the iPlayer (accounting for up to 1.3 million unique visitors weekly), news, sport and weather.
Programmes which performed particularly well on BBC iPlayer include Ashes To Ashes, coverage of the Six Nations clash between England and Wales and Life In Cold Blood.
Ashley Highfield, director of BBC Future Media and Technology, said: “While it’s still early days, early indications are that BBC iPlayer is having a significant effect in attracting new users to bbc.co.uk.
“To build on this initial success, we continue to reach out to audiences wherever they are, and we now have BBC-branded ‘channels’ on Yahoo! and partnerships with MSN and Blinkx going live soon.
“These enable you to watch highlights and excerpts of BBC programmes, as well as clicking on a link to watch the full programme on BBC iPlayer. In addition, we are introducing new features on the BBC iPlayer homepage, including improved navigation options and programme recommendations.”
Yesterday BBC Worldwide signed a deal to offer paid downloads of shows such as Life on Mars and Torchwood on iTunes.
Around 10 series will be made available on the UK iTunes store at about £1.89 per episode. Viewers can then watch the shows on a Mac or PC, iPod with video, iPhone or Apple TV. This will be the first time the broadband TV service has been available beyond PC and Mac computers.
The Apple deal is one of a number of initiatives designed to boost the popularity of the iPlayer service, including the introduction of new features such as programme recommendations, which emulate the strengths of the online shopping service Amazon (see BBC Shows Now On iTunes).
A report from analyst Screen Digest published earlier this month forecast that the iPlayer would be the driving force behind web TV growth this year (see BBC iPlayer To Aid Web TV Growth).
However, it added that the iPlayer’s dominance is building a precedent for free services that is making it harder for revenue-generating commercial strategies for online video to establish themselves.
BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk