BBC reports 23% increase in April iPlayer traffic

Line of Duty

The BBC reported a 23% year-on-year increase in programme requests to its on-demand iPlayer service in April.

Programme requests reached 274 million for the month, with episodes of comedy series Peter Kay’s Car Share and drama Line of Duty proving most popular among viewers.

“Four-part comedy series Peter Kay’s Car Share was the month’s most popular programme, with all four episodes in the top five rankings and all episodes achieving over two million requests each,” according to a BBC report.

“The new series of Line of Duty saw five of its six episodes in the top ten ranking, while there were more than one million requests for the Doctor’s first episode back, The Pilot.”

The news comes as the BBC prepares to soon make it mandatory for iPlayer users to create passwords and log-in in order to access the video-on-demand service.

“Now when you sign-in you will benefit from personal recommendations and the ability to change device and seamlessly pick-up a programme where you left it,” said Dan McGolpin, the BBC’s controller of programming and daytime.