BBC iPlayer - total requests for streams and downloads, TV and Radio programmes (millions)

BBC iPlayer at Christmas

Christmas is a popular time of year for iPlayer. And with so many new gadgets given as gifts this year many of you downloaded the iPlayer app to watch and catch-up on the programmes you've missed.

During the festive season last year Monday 2 January was the best day BBC iPlayer ever had with 5.4 million TV programmes requested. This year Tuesday 1 January (New Year's Day) was the most popular for TV viewing with 6.7 million request for TV programmes.

Online requests for streams and downloads (27 Dec - 1 Jan)

Christmas 2012 on BBC iPlayer

This year we saw 77 million requests for TV and Radio programmes throughout the festive period (22 Dec - 1 Jan, excluding Virgin Cable data which is not yet available).

Throughout this period:
• The most popular day in terms of TV programme requests was New Year's Day.
• Doctor Who - The Snowmen was the most popular programme, followed by Eastenders and Miranda. Other top performing programmes were Outnumbered, Call the Midwife and Merlin(see table below for the top 20).

Top 20 programmes (requests rounded to nearest 1000)

BBC iPlayer - whenever and wherever you want it

As I've talked about before one of our key goals for iPlayer in 2012 was to take it beyond the PC and onto a host of different devices from mobile smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and games consoles. We want to make it as easy as possible to watch and catch up on your favourite programmes.

It appears the UK was particularly generous with gifts this Christmas! We've witnessed a significant spike in users installing iPlayer on new tablets and smartphones with devices such as the Nexus 7, iPad and Kindle Fire HD proving popular.

Throughout the festive period we saw more and more viewers accessing programmes on mobiles, tablets and internet-connected TVs.

Please note: all the following data is for TV only, for a fair comparison across devices, some of which are not primarily used for radio listening.

On mobiles and tablets:
• Requests increased on Christmas Day +40% on tablets and +66% on mobiles compared with Christmas Eve. Mobile and tablet viewing requests grew even further on Boxing Day and saw another catch-up viewing peak on New Year's Day.
• During the whole festive period the iPlayer app was downloaded nearly one million times - with almost 300,000 downloads on Christmas Day alone.
• By the end of 2012 the iPlayer app had been downloaded nearly 13 million times.

Popular programmes on mobiles and tablets:
• While Doctor Who was in the top three most popular programmes for all types of device, the Christmas Day EastEnders was number one on mobiles and tablets across the festive period.
• Some comedy programmes such as Outnumbered also ranked more highly on mobiles and tablets.

But people still want to watch TV on a TV and with increasing numbers of TVs being connected to the internet iPlayer requests were also strong on these devices throughout this period.

On internet connected TVs (such as smart TVs, games consoles and TV platforms):
• These devices followed the overall pattern of viewing on PCs, since they saw stiff competition from live TV screens - dipping on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and picking up for catch-up viewing from 27 onwards. Requests from PCs saw their largest peak on New Year's Day.
• Most popular programmes were in line with the overall trend - Doctor Who, Miranda and EastEnders - with family films and comedy also very popular.

Daily online requests by device type for TV programmes (millions)

Happy New Year from BBC iPlayer

I hope you've had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the year ahead.
We've got lots of exciting plans to make iPlayer even better and look forward to sharing them with you in the months to come.

As always, it's great to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment below. Have a great 2013.

Dave Price is the head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media.

In this short period of time we've witnessed a dramatic change in the Android platform and in BBC usage on the platform.

When we launched, seven inch Android tablets weren't driving significant usage. Fast forward three months and the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 are now both firmly in the top five Android devices for BBC iPlayer and the BBC Media Player.

The Android platform is extremely important to the BBC and our audience and engineering for it requires an ongoing commitment.

To that end I have a significant engineering team working on both the Android media playback experience and BBC iPlayer application on Android devices.

Strictly Come Dancing frame from old video encode and frame from new improved video encode

We have three goals:

1. Improve the playback experience.
2. Achieve feature parity between iOS and Android.
3. Support a variety of screen sizes.

We're not going to get there overnight, however starting before Christmas and continuing over the coming months we have a series of releases that will make the BBC iPlayer experience on Android devices more appealing and engaging.

Improving the playback experience

Android as a platform is becoming increasingly complex and fragmented with a huge difference between video playback capabilities across the 1500+ Android devices.

Rather than use the one-size-fits-all approach that has worked on iOS we are grouping Android devices into classifications based on their capabilities.

For example, for devices which don't support advanced video playback we will have to deliver lower quality video streams.

For devices with bigger screens and capable of advanced playback we'll enable high quality video encodes along the lines of those on iOS devices.

Since we can't rely on adaptive bitrate yet we aim to start at a higher quality encode for larger screens and a lower quality encode for smaller ones.

We will also take network into consideration so we'll start with higher quality on WiFi and 4G networks and lower quality over 3G.

These improvements start before Christmas with a new high quality media encode when using WiFi.

There is still plenty of work ongoing and we'll be releasing further updates throughout 2013 as we deliver on the rest of this ambition.

Achieving feature parity between iOS and Android

Thus far we've found ourselves releasing products first on iOS because of the challenges of supporting a variety of Android platform versions and devices.

Of course we want to deliver products simultaneously on iOS and Android and we are striving to fill gaps such as mobile downloads and launching iPlayer Radio on Android. This will take time.

First and foremost we'll focus on video quality but rest assured we're working on filling gaps in feature and product parity at the same time.

Since the fragmentation on Android requires more work than a single implementation on iOS we've also made investments in engineering so Android and iOS can deliver at broadly the same pace.

The upcoming BBC iPlayer release on Android introduces an updated UI that provides the foundations for the team to build future features.

In addition you'll find you can now listen to radio shows in the iPlayer app with your screen turned off while answering email or using other applications on your Android device.

Supporting a breadth of devices

Providing support across all Android devices is complex due to the variety of devices, operating system versions and screen sizes.

Before Christmas we're going to enable iPlayer on Jellybean 4.2 and offer a richer tablet experience on devices such as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD.

Thereafter--with Adobe and Google's help--we'll improve playback on devices like the Sony Xperia Arc.

Into 2013 we'll prioritise the most popular Android devices so we can deliver the best experience for the biggest audience. As you can see this is just the beginning.

I hope the upcoming pre-Christmas releases make opening new presents and using existing Android devices more pleasurable. The experience will continue to get even better as we move into the new year.

Dave Price is the Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media.

We thought the Olympics was the highlight of the year but I’m delighted to tell you that we have broken the 200-million-requests-per-month mark, with 213 million requests for TV and radio programmes last month across all platforms.

This is an increase of +20% year-on-year boosted as usual by the great new autumn TV schedule delivering fantastic stats for iPlayer.

Choosing programmes by genre on BBC iPlayer

October trends

As we also saw during the Olympics, the way people are watching iPlayer on multiple different platforms and devices is changing.

In October 43 million programmes were requested via TV platforms (this includes smart TVs, operator platforms and games consoles) - 20% of all requests - while mobile phones and tablets recorded 28 million and 21 million requests, with year-on-year increases of +168% and +236% respectively, and together now delivering 23% of all requests.

This shows the extent to which internet-connected devices are really starting to penetrate the market and the fact that BBC iPlayer is available on a large range of mobiles and tablets out there.

How this fits with our strategy

One of our key goals for iPlayer in 2012 was to take it beyond the PC and onto a host of different devices, from mobile smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and games consoles.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to watch and catch up on programmes whenever you want, wherever you want to.

We’re now on over 650 devices and these growth figures really show this strategy is delivering for audiences, making favourite BBC programmes available at a time that suits you.

Last month we launched iPlayer on Sky+ which was a key milestone for us as it means audiences on all major UK TV platforms can watch, listen and catch-up on the best BBC programmes in their living room, whenever and wherever they want.

And earlier this year we launched BBC iPlayer on Xbox - meaning we’re now on all major UK games consoles.

Looking to the future

We see internet-connected TVs as the platform of the future.

It’s no big surprise that when at home, audiences like to watch TV on the best screen in the house - the TV. And it’s not just us thinking this.

YouGov recently published the latest wave of its ‘Smart TV’ study which found that the proportion of people who are looking to buy a smart TV is on the rise.

Behind live TV viewing, catch-up TV services like iPlayer are the second most popular activity for smart TV owners, used by a majority of people with these new devices.

Marketing campaign

So, with this in mind we wanted to let our audiences know that this is exactly what they can do. That’s why we’ve just launched our new BBC iPlayer TV advert - ‘Telly on your Telly’ - talking about just that - watching TV on your TV.

Click here to see the advert for yourself and as always, really keen to hear what you think of it.

Dave Price is the Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media.

We're upgrading our media player for two principle reasons. Firstly, so that the BBC can continue to offer the highest quality media playback and new experiences like those used by millions of people during the Olympics on the BBC Sport site.

Secondly, Flash Player 10.1 was released in June 2010, and since then there have been five further major releases (which most people have upgraded to). By focusing the Engineering and Test teams on the most commonly used versions of Flash Player we can maintain confidence in the high quality of BBC iPlayer for the widest audience.

So, from 22 August 2012, you'll need Adobe Flash Player 10.2 or above to continue using BBC iPlayer on your desktop.

We've tried to ensure this change affects the fewest people possible, but appreciate making any changes can be a bit of a pain. As 98.5% of people who use the desktop version of BBC iPlayer already have a version of Flash Player in excess of 10.2, we're confident only a small proportion of you are affected.

For those using Flash Player 10.1 and below, the upgrade is really simple. You can upgrade at the Adobe website in advance (or see the BBC Webwise Guide), or wait for update prompts on BBC iPlayer next Wednesday.

As always happy to receive your feedback.

Dave Price is the Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media

Update 20/08/12 14:58: Adobe link changed at user Squirrel's suggestion

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash Installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

I'm Dave Price, the head of BBC iPlayer, and I'm thrilled to let you know that as of this morning, BBC iPlayer is available on the Xbox 360.

As we've said in our press release, today's launch means that BBC iPlayer is now on all major games consoles in the UK. Users of Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, and the Xbox 360 all have access to the BBC programmes they know and love for free, using BBC iPlayer.

Today’s launch builds on a core BBC value, to reach all audiences on a universal basis at no extra charge. So we are delighted that BBC iPlayer content will be available to all Xbox 360 users, for free. Indeed the BBC is the only UK content partner to make their service available free to all Xbox Live Gold members and Xbox Live Free (previously known as Silver) members..

Last year, BBC iPlayer set out to go beyond the PC, bringing content to audiences on the devices and platforms they use – whether that is a laptop or connected TV at home, or a mobile or tablet device when out and about.

In 2011, we saw huge growth for BBC iPlayer on connected TVs- either through Smart TVs, operator platforms or hooking up games consoles. There were 433 million requests for programmes during last year, or said another way one in four requests was on a TV. And with BBC iPlayer coming to Sky homes later in the year, and today’s launch of BBC iPlayer on the Xbox, we’re expecting this dramatic growth to continue.

But, why specifically are games consoles important? Games consoles are no longer just about gaming, they’ve evolved into entertainment/media hubs where viewers can watch and interact with programmes.

We know the majority of games consoles are in the living room and connected to the TV. Most are also connected to the Internet. However, until very recently, many of these have only been used for gaming. With the launch of BBC iPlayer on Xbox, we’re excited to be unlocking a new audience, and perhaps provided a new reason to connect the device to the Internet… I can tell you the fight is already happening in my home for control of the Xbox! And my wife has never been interested in Call of Duty!

We’re really excited to launch on the Xbox today and really hope you like the service. I love to hear what you think and am always interested in your feedback.

Dave Price is the Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media

Sharetools on a BBC iPlayer page

Already rolled out to some other parts of BBC Online (e.g. BBC News, BBC Food, this blog), Share Tools make sharing content on iPlayer even easier.

Just look for the 'Share' icon underneath the player window, when you're watching or listening to any programme.

These allow you to share the page with your friends across Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

We've been listening to your feedback and analysing how the new site performs since we came out of beta last September. As a consequence, Share Tools replaces the 'recommend' option on playback pages, making it even easier to share programmes with your friends.

I hope you enjoy sharing your favourite programmes with friends and family.

Dave Price is Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media

The new feature means that with the latest BBC iPlayer Desktop application, you can "subscribe" to download future episodes of any programme on BBC iPlayer. The desktop application installs on your computer and lets you download programmes to watch in the highest available quality, regardless of your broadband speed.

BBC iPlayer download buttons

For those who aren't acquainted with the app, you can download and install it here at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/install, or click the download buttons next to most programmes in BBC iPlayer.

 Here are a few good reasons to use the BBC iPlayer Desktop app:

• You no longer need to remember to watch your programme within seven days. Downloaded programmes are available for up to 30 days before they expire (seven days once you've started to watch).

• You don't need to remember to come back to the website. No excuses for missing an episode of BBC One's The Apprentice or BBC Four's The Killing! Once you've enabled Series Record, new episodes automatically download when available, meaning all your favourite programmes are available for offline viewing for 30 days.

• You can watch BBC programmes when offline. Very useful for those with limited bandwidth who struggle with streaming or who are on the move, but also useful when you're overseas** (if you download in the UK before leaving: my top holiday tip!)

• You can watch programmes in high quality, even if your broadband connection isn't fast enough to watch on the Web. If watching live or streaming in HD pushes the limits of your Internet connection, you can download in HD or the highest available quality and say goodbye to buffering or interruptions during playback.

 

For more information about BBC iPlayer Desktop, please take a look at the FAQs here. Your feedback helps us develop features you love, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.

** In order to watch already downloaded programmes when abroad, you'll need to make sure you're not connected to the Internet.

Dave Price is Head of BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On-Demand, BBC Future Media

Radioplayer is the culmination of a successful partnership between the BBC and Commercial radio to provide consumers with an attractive proposition for easy online radio listening and an easy-to-use application that allows quick navigation between stations and search function across radio stations online.

I've been asked many times about the future BBC plans for online Radio, on this topic it is worth referencing Daniel Danker's previous post.

So what does Radioplayer mean for BBC online radio listeners? Quite simply whether you navigate from the Radio network sites or from BBC iPlayer if you use the existing pop up console, you'll have a new console with some great enhancements! There are no changes to how you consume Radio in BBC iPlayer, so if you prefer to listen in page you'll be pleased to hear that option remains.

The Radioplayer console

The previous version of the BBC radio console was designed against three key principles;

simplicity, discoverability and personalisation.

Throughout the BBC's relationship with the Radioplayer partners it has been hugely important to ensure we built upon these principles.

We thought the best way to do that was by delivering a consistent user experience across BBC and Commercial stations, yet ensuring we have a framework for BBC, and indeed Commercial, stations to innovate and express their unique identity. This has been realised through enabling:

• Industry wide UK radio station presets

• Simple and consistent player controls

• Pan industry search allowing audiences to discover and switch between stations

• Establishing a framework for presenting supporting content

The Radioplayer preset

BBC and Commercial radio station presets

The Radioplayer partnership has enabled the BBC to extend its existing Station preset functionality, as of today you can now discover and save your favourite radio stations and programmes and seamlessly switch between BBC and Commercial networks. Over the coming weeks numerous new stations will be joining the partnership.

Same size, same media player...

The BBC UX&D team led the Radioplayer partnership in defining an agreed set of design guidelines, that outlined the size of the console, interactions and the simple media player controls. For the user this means whether they are using a Radioplayer console to listen to BBC Radio 1, Xfm, Absolute Radio or Juice 107.2 they will have a familiar experience.

A single place to discover UK radio

In February Paul Clark wrote about partner linking in iPlayer for TV broadcasters , with the launch of the Radioplayer, online listeners can similarly discover and switch to radio stations and programmes from across the UK. The common metadata and search functionality mean regardless of whether you are listening to BBC Radio 4, Capital or Smooth the results returned will be consistent.

Radioplayer search

Search is a feature that will experience continued refinement, as partner metadata improves and algorithms evolve the accuracy of results. By its very nature a degree of serendipitous content will also surface offering audiences the ability to quickly discover unfamiliar and new content.

For those interested Radioplayer search has been built upon the new Radioplayer metadata specification a result of the collaboration of industry metadata experts

Supporting content and innovation

While it was important for Radioplayer to offer a consistent user experience, none of the partners wanted to stifle innovation or restrict brand identity. As such ¾ of the real estate is available for stations to customise.

Our audience research clearly highlights that first and foremost online radio audiences want to listen. However, they consistently expressed the need to discover more about BBC programmes and quickly find and share content.

The team delivering the BBC Radioplayer console have continued to keep this in mind, and as such focused on improving how we surface supporting information, including improvements to the favouriting and recommending interactions, plus we've added track now playing information.

The latter has been the top feature request, and it's great to be able to display the track information (and associated links to /music page) for live broadcasts on Radio 1, Radio 1 Extra, Radio 2 and Radio 6 Music.

I look forward to your feedback, and observing the usage of the BBC Radioplayer console.

Dave Price is Product Lead, BBC iPlayer, Programmes and On Demand, BBC Future Media.

 

Online listeners of BBC radio may have noticed the BBC iPlayer team recently launched a new version of the pop-out radio console.

Anthony Rose in his previous post described some of the new features in the latest version of iPlayer. In this post I wanted to focus on the enhancements we've made for our global radio audience.

Whether you pop out the console from a BBC Radio site, BBC News or iPlayer, we continue to recognise first and foremost online radio audiences want to listen, and as such the new features in the console have been layered into the design to ensure they complement the listening experience rather than distract.

Online listeners requested we provide additional programme information with our broadcasts. The new console features a short synopsis and clear signposts to further episode information for both the current and next radio programmes. And watch out over the coming months for now playing track information for BBC music programmes.

The new favourite feature available in the iPlayer site is also present in the pop-out console, enabling listeners to highlight their favourite programmes so there is no longer an excuse to miss future episodes of A History Of The World. Not only can you favourite for your own pleasure, you can share your recommended programmes with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

 

An average day for me might consist of tuning in to Shaun Keaveny on 6 Music, catching the local news and travel on BBC Three Counties Radio and finishing the day tuning in to 5live for Champions League football commentary. The Stations feature in both the pop-out console and iPlayer site makes it possible for listeners to quickly discover and personalise their list of favourite national, nations and regional stations, so in the future switching between stations and programmes is possible with the minimum of clicks.

We understand that a pop-out console is not to everyone's taste and today iPlayer offers even more alternative listening options. Radio listeners should check out the latest iPlayer Desktop application, which for the first time features live Radio, or perhaps listening in page through the iPlayer site will satisfy your live and on-demand audio needs.

 

David Blackall previously discussed some of the enhancements we made as a result of your feedback during the iPlayer beta. We've not stopped listening and will continue to improve Radio in iPlayer. For example, you asked for A to Z filtering of station programmes and this will be added as soon as possible, and we're also continuing to investigate the streaming problems plaguing some of our international listeners. Please keep sending us your feedback, using the comments below or tweet including #bbciplayerfeedback.

Dave Price is Product Manager, BBC iPlayer