BBC iPlayer Reaches 120 Million Programme Requests Per Month

BBC's popular iPlayer platform has managed to smash through the 120 million programme requests milestone in January 2010, its third consecutive highest month.

Not surprisingly, the  bad weather and the long winter nights have been major factors to the iPlayer success in 2009 and early 2010. Hundreds of thousands had to stay indoors and in many a time, video on demand was one of the more readily available pastimes.

The 120 million mark represents a 6 percent rise over the month of December 2009, which itself recorded a 14 percent increase over November.

Interestingly, Virgin Media's video on demand platform accounted for a fifth of the programme requests, something that could bode well for Project Canvas.

Around 70 percent of the requests were for TV programmes and the most popular shows were Top Gear, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Mock the week and Tracey Beaker Returns.

TV shows were more popular during the peak evening period, from 8pm to 10pm, with roughly 201,000 viewers, a tiny number compared to TV's average peak of 28.4 million. Radio shows on the other hand were likely to be listened in around noon.

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For a more detailed analysis and the complete report in PDF format, head for the BBC's iPlayer report for January 2010 here.