BBC iPlayer | 75 million and counting

Julian Sharpe | 4:30 pm | May 20, 2008 | News, Social Media

The BBC iplayer has received more than 75 million requests to either stream or download programmes from the BBC database. The latest released figures show 21m requests for downloads and streams of BBC programmes in April an increase on the month of march which peaked at 17.2m. The figures show a more than 20% growth month-on-month.

Average weekly users of the BBC iPlayer reached 1.4m in April, up from 1.1m in March, and double January’s average 750,000 users.

The average daily number of streams and downloads increased to 700,000 in April up by more than a quarter on the more than 550,000 daily requests achieved in March and even more staggering close to double January’s average of 360,000.

The last two weeks of May shows the average number of requests to view has increased to 716,000, and requests peaked at 900,000 with users at 390,000 on Sunday 18 May.

Top programmes are Doctor Who and The Apprentice which continue to dominated the top 20 programmes on BBC iPlayer during April. BBC Three comedy Gavin and Stacey received a 250,000 requests in the week between 19 and 25 April, which is believed to be as a result of the award wins at the Baftas.

The BBC iPlayer demographics show it is split across a broad audience with 43% of the audience aged 35 to 54 years, 37% aged 16 to 34, and 21% aged 55 and over.