BBC reports ‘best month on record’ for iPlayer

McMafia

The BBC reported a record 328 million programme requests on iPlayer in January, marking “the best month on record” for the catch-up service.

The BBC said the number of shows accessed on the iPlayer in January was up 10% compared to the same month in 2017, with an average of 10.6 million daily requests for TV content in January this year.

BBC crime drama McMafia was the most popular show of the month, with episode one of the series streamed 3.4 million times. Three other episodes from this series were among the top-10 most requested shows in January.

The other top 10 most-requested shows of the month were episodes of the dramas Silent Witness and Hard Sun, as well as three episodes of long-running soap opera Eastenders.

“2018 has got off to a flying start, thanks in no small part to a range of gripping BBC dramas. McMafia, Hard Sun and Silent Witness dominate our most popular programmes on iPlayer for January, as does the always strong-performing EastEnders,” said Dan McGolpin, controller of programming and daytime for the BBC.

“It was also impressive to see the wildlife series Big Cats make this month’s top five performing series with an average of over 1 million requests per episode. It’s been a great start to the year, and we’re aiming to build on that success in the coming months.”

Last month the BBC said that 2017 was the “best year ever” for the iPlayer. Company stats revealed that viewers streamed 272 million programmes per month on average in 2017, with total requests growing to 3.3 billion – an 11% increase on the previous year.