The mighty iPlayer has smashed viewing numbers again in January. For the third month in a row in the figures have broken records, for the month of January it had over 120 million streams played on the catch up tv service said the BBC.

The rise has been attributed partly to the grim UK weather, with snow, hail and rain keeping a majority of the population inside watching tv. iPlayer streams accessed by viewers television sets via the Virgin Media TV network accounted for a fifth of that number.

This marks the third month on the trot that the BBC has seen record breaking iPlayer viewing figures, the major milestone of 100 million streams was hit in December 2009. Prior to that in November 2009, the iPlayer saw figures of 88.2 million stream requests

Most viewed BBC iPlayer episodes for January 2010:-

1. Top Gear Series 14, Episode 7 – 1,135,000 requests
2. Doctor Who: The End of Time Part 2 – 831,000 requests
3. Gavin and Stacey Series 3 Episode 6 – 700,000 requests
4. Mock the Week Series 8 Episode 1 – 658,000 requests
5. Tracy Beaker Returns Episode 1 – 565,000 requests

Viewing figures peaked between the hours of 8-10pm in January, echoing traditional tv peak viewing time. During the daytime is when most radio streams were downloaded.

The iPlayer has been a phenomenal success since it was conceived and is available on iPhone, game consoles and via internet enabled television sets. However the competition has never been that strong, it will be interesting to see if the figures continue to rise after the launch of rival tv on demand website, SeeSaw which launched last week.

Related posts:

1. iPlayer Has Record Viewing Figures For October
2. iPlayer Record Breaking Viewing Figures For December
3. Mobile Phone iPlayer Viewing Habits Revealed
4. Hulu And Youtube Get Record Viewing Figures
5. BBC’s iPlayer has a christmas cracker