There were 276 million requests to BBC iPlayer in May, which marked an increase of two per cent month on month, bucking the trend typically seen in iPlayer at this time of year, where spring and summer brings a month-on-month slow down in requests.
TV requests were up 10 per cent year on year to 222 million, with an additional 20 million requests compared to May 2014. Nine per cent of TV requests were for live viewing in May, and for radio, live requests were stable at 73 per cent of the total.
Peter Kay’s Car Share continued to perform very well in May, with the first four episodes appearing in the top five titles. Episode 2 received a total of 1,452,000 views. New documentary Shark also proved popular this month along with coverage of the UK General Election 2015. The political coverage received 1,249,000 views, proving more popular than Eastenders, which otherwise dominates the top 20 episodes chart. Other popular TV content included The C Word, The Eurovision Song Contest and the first episodes of new drama series The Game and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (pictured).
The profile of BBC iPlayer users has evened out over time in terms of male/female ratio, but remains strongly under-55 in terms of age, which is younger than the typical TV viewer or radio listener’s profile, although more in line with home broadband users. Forty-six per cent of iPlayer users are aged 16-34, 35 per cent are aged 35-54, and just 20 per cent are over 55.
BBC iPlayer is used for TV at roughly the same time of day as linear TV viewing, although there is proportionally more daytime and late-peak use. TV viewing sees a 24.3 million peak at 9pm, whereas iPlayer’s peak comes an hour later, with 561,000 users. For radio, BBC iPlayer is used far more in the daytime than traditional radio listening, which peaks at breakfast-time.
