Christmas is always a busy time for BBC iPlayer as people seek out the unmissable TV they would otherwise have missed and unwrap new devices capable of accessing iPlayer (of which there are now over 1,000).
BBC iPlayer at Christmas
The festive season started with an early Christmas treat for viewers and fans in the lead-up to the much-anticipated third series of Sherlock – Many Happy Returns; which has since been viewed over 1.5 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Red Button with millions more watching on YouTube.
With new gadgets being at the top of many Christmas wish lists, a lot of new devices accessed BBC iPlayer over the holiday period. 2013 truly proved to be the year of the tablet – Boxing Day saw tablet viewing overtake computer viewing for the first time in iPlayer history.
The iPlayer mobile and tablet apps were downloaded almost one million times over the festive period (Saturday 21 December to New Year’s Day), 941,000 to be exact, adding to the 20 million app downloads iPlayer reached in October.
New Year’s Day 2014 took the crown as iPlayer’s best-ever day so far, with nearly 11 million requests for TV and radio programmes in one day alone (even excluding Sky and Virgin data). New Year’s Day 2013 saw 8.1m so this is an impressive 35% increase.
Christmas 2013 on BBC iPlayer
This year saw 102 million requests for TV and Radio programmes (80m for TV, 22m for radio) throughout the festive period (21 Dec – 1 Jan, excluding Virgin Cable data which is not yet available).
Throughout this period:
Dr Who – The Time of the Doctor was the most popular programme, followed by Eastenders and Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special. Other top performing programmes were Call the Midwife, Gangsta Granny and Still Open All Hours.
Programme Requests on iPlayer (millions):
1 Doctor Who – The Time of the Doctor 1.964
2 EastEnders – 25 Dec 1.595
3 EastEnders – 26 Dec 1.380
4 Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special 1 – 1.364
5 EastEnders – 27 Dec 1.257
6 Call the Midwife Christmas Special – 1.021
7 Gangsta Granny – 1.016
8 EastEnders – 31 Dec 0.961
9 EastEnders – 30 Dec 0.937
10 EastEnders – 24 Dec 0.922
11 EastEnders – 23 Dec 0.872
12 Still Open All Hours – 26 Dec 0.842
13 Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special 2 – 0.820
14 EastEnders – 20 Dec 0.793
15 Death Comes to Pemberley Episode 1 – 0.771
16 Citizen Khan Series 2 Episode 7 – 0.751
17 Michael McIntyre’s Showtime – 25 Dec 0.643
18 Strictly Come Dancing Series 11 Grand Final – 0.626
19 Nativity! – 0.586
20 Atlantis – Episode 12 Part 1 0.584
Source: [BBC Blog]
