BBC iPlayer Records Growth

LONDON, February 20: The BBC has announced that more than 17 million programs—up to 500,000 a day—have been downloaded or streamed on demand via BBC iPlayer.

BBC iPlayer is a newly-launched service that allows viewers in the U.K. to access television programs via the PC. It offers both seven-day catch-up television and live streaming, and now also incorporates radio ‘listen again’ and live streaming. The TV programs are free for British license-fee payers, with no advertising. Once a program has been downloaded to the computer, there is a 30-day window within which to start watching and seven days to finish watching it.

During the month of January, more than 2.2 million people watched a program on BBC iPlayer, with approximately 11 million TV programs streamed or downloaded on demand. Programs that performed well on BBC iPlayer include Ashes To Ashes, coverage of the Six Nations rugby match between England and Wales and Life In Cold Blood.

The pubcaster’s website, bbc.co.uk, averaged 20 million weekly British visitors in the month of January, a 29-percent increase on the year-ago period, driven chiefly by BBC iPlayer (accounting for up to 1.3 million unique visitors weekly), news, sport and weather.

Ashley Highfield, the 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 programs, as well as clicking on a link to watch the full program on BBC iPlayer. In addition, we are introducing new features on the BBC iPlayer homepage, including improved navigation options and program recommendations.”

—By Irene Lew