BBC iPlayer broke records for the third month in a row, topping over 145 million requests for programmes during December 2010.
This new record is up 27% from December 2009 and includes new individual records for total amount of TV requests (89.7 million), total requests for programmes through BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media (23.9 million) and total requests for programmes through BBC iPlayer on Sony’s Playstation 3, (7 million) up 31%, month on month.
Daniel Danker, General Manager, Programmes and On Demand, said: “These figures are a fantastic way to start the new year and I’m looking forward to building on these while we continue to evolve and improve BBC iPlayer. In December we saw huge growth of BBC iPlayer on game consoles, connected TVs, and mobiles phones. We’re seeing impressive audience appreciation for our TV and mobile experiences, and I anticipate that growth on these devices will significantly outpace traditional BBC iPlayer use in 2011”
Top Gear continued its dominance at the top of charts for the Top 20 most popular TV programmes in December with almost 1.3 million requests for each Top Gear special, while Lord Alan Sugar’s search for his new apprentice proved popular with the final five episodes all landing in the top 10. Rounding out the top 10 most requested programmes were Matt Lucas and David Walliams’s new airport based comedy, Come Fly With Me charting at number five, with over 780 thousand requests for episode one and the traditional Christmas Day episodes of Doctor Who and EastEnders, receiving over 700,000 and 600,000 requests respectively.