BBC passes 300 million iPlayer requests in record month

The BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service celebrated its biggest ever month in January, surpassing 300 million TV and radio programme requests for the first time.

According to BBC stats, in January there was an average of 10.2 million daily iPlayer programme requests, “the highest ever seen,” with more than 315 million total TV and radio requests.

Mobiles and tablets accounted for 40% of show requests, a total of 127 million and another record for the BBC, which it attributed to many mobile devices being received at Christmas.

Overall iPlayer traffic was helped by the popularity of shows including Sherlock. The first episode in the latest season of the detective drama, The Empty Hearse, notched 3.6 million requests in January – establishing it as the third most requested programme on the iPlayer of all time.

Other shows that performed well in the month were singing competition The Voice, long-running soap opera Eastenders and school-based drama Waterloo Road.

In keeping with previous months, the BBC said that the profile of iPlayer users “remains strongly under-55 in terms of age,” which is younger than the typical TV viewer.

The iPlayer is also used for TV at roughly the same time of day as linear TV viewing, though there is proportionally more daytime and late-peak use.