BBC iPlayer requests up 6% in May

Programme requests to the BBC’s catch-up service, the iPlayer, were up 6% year-on-year in May, reaching 273 million – more than at any point in 2013. 

Announcing the internal figures in its monthly iPlayer performance pack, the BBC said that 202 million of the 273 million requests were for TV shows, stable month-on-month, while the remaining 71 million were for radio programmes.

By device type, the most requests came from computers, accounting for 33% of total requests. This was up from 31% in the previous month, with the BBC attributing the rise entirely to a growth in radio listening.

Tablets were the second most-used device for accessing the iPlayer with 24% of total requests, followed by mobiles in third place with 18% of requests.

For TV show requests only, tablets and computers continued to account for the majority of traffic, accounting for 29% of traffic each.

The BBC also noted “some modest growth in request from TV platforms in May,” with TV platform operators accounting for 17%, games consoles 4% and internet TVs and other connected devices 3%.

Consistent with previous months, the BBC said that the iPlayer is used for TV viewing at roughly the same time of day as linear TV viewing, although there is proportionally more daytime and late-peak use.

The profile of the BBC iPlayer users remains “strongly under-55 in terms of age,” which is younger than the typical TV or radio listener, though is split roughly evenly between men and women, according to the BBC.