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iPlayer enjoys record festive period

January 4, 2013

The BBC recorded 77 million iPlayer requests for TV and radio programmes from December 22nd to January 1st – 32 per cent up on a similar 11-day period last year, when it reported 58.4 million requets.

iPlayer traffic peaked on New Year’s Day with a record 6.7 million requests for TV programmes, up from a 2011 festive high of 5.4 million (on January 2nd 2011).

The previous record was 6.4 million requests for TV programmes on one day during the London 2012 games on August 7th.

The BBC iPlayer launched on Christmas Day in 2007 on the PC, but celebrated its fifth birthday as the number one VoD brand that is available on more than 650 devices, including TV, mobile, tablets and games consoles.

Doctor Who – The Snowmen was the most popular TV show on iPlayer over Christmas, attracting 1,467,220 requests. It was followed by the Christmas Day edition of EastEnders, at 1.4 million requests, and the first episode of the new series of comedy Miranda, at 1.3 million requests.

Dave Price, the head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media, said in a blog post that there was also a “big spike” in installs of the BBC iPlayer mobile app on tablets and smartphones over Christmas, with the “Nexus 7, iPad and Kindle Fire HD proving popular”.

During the whole festive period the iPlayer app was downloaded nearly 1 million times, said Price, and there were nearly 300,000 downloads of the app on Christmas Day alone. In the whole of 2012, the iPlayer app was downloaded nearly 13 million times.

Categories: Articles, Catch Up, VOD