The highly rated iPlayer from the BBC continues to grow in popularity. After a small dip in February the online figures continue to rise. On Wednesday the usage and viewingstatistics for the BBC iplayer catch-up service were released. Some of the more interesting points to come out were:-

• Viewing stats from all of the platforms that iPlayer runs on (including the Virgin Media’s implementation of the service, as well as on computers, game consoles and mobile phones), the iPlayer received 117.6 million requests for programs (around 84 million for there TV programs and around 33 million for radio programs), up from 116.4 million in February, but down from 120.3 million in January. There were 17.3 million TV programming requests via Virgin Media, the lowest number since last September; and 67 million TV programming requests online (including PC’s, game consoles and mobiles), the lowest number since last December.

• While the Online services recieved 3.2 million programming requests per day on average, down from 3.5 million in February (note: the BBC says daily usage stats for the iPlayer on Virgin Media are not yet available as “Virgin Media data arrives later than online stats”). The service attracted an average of 1.28 million daily users online in March, compared to an average of 1.37 million daily users in February and 1.29 million in January. The decreases were all driven by declines in usage of the iPlayer’s TV offerings, while usage of its radio offerings was stable.

• An average weekly amount of time per user spent watching TV programs on the iPlayer in March increased 6% to 68 minutes and the average weekly amount of time per user spent listening to radio programs increased 8% to 176 minutes.

• The iPlayer is most commonly used for TV viewing at roughly the same time of day as most linear TV viewing takes place (i.e. primetime), though there is proportionally more daytime and late-peak use.

It is probably a given that useage will increase month on month with iPlayer running on so many devices and set-top boxes. With the proliferation of internet-connected tv sets expect the rise to continue.

Related News:

1. BBC iPlayer Smashes Viewing Figures For January
2. iPlayer Has Record Viewing Figures For October
3. iPlayer Record Breaking Viewing Figures For December
4. Hulu Flying In February As Internet TV Viewing Figures Rise Again
5. iPlayer Has Record 1.4 Million Visitors Per Day In February