Digital TV News

More Brits watching catch-up TV on BBC iPlayer

Tuesday 23 February, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Brits watched more than 120 million programmes on the BBC iPlayer in January - spearheaded by hits such as Top Gear, Gavin and Stacey and EastEnders.

The online on-demand TV service from the BBC is continuing to grow, as more and more Brits are using the free service to catch-up on their favourite programmes.

Programme requests on the BBC iPlayer rose to 120 million in January, up from 115 million in December, and double the number in January 2009, according to data from BBC iStats.

Jon Ingram, operations director at Digitalchoices.co.uk, said: “Unsurprisingly, Top Gear remains the most watched show on the BBC iPlayer. Over one million people watched episode seven of the current series on the iPlayer.”

While the iPlayer is still being predominantly watched online, Virgin Media customers are also watching more BBC catch-up via their set-top box.

And Nintendo Wii gamers and Sony PS3 gamers are also watching more programmes on-demand using their games consoles.

Ingram added: “Following the launch of free, online catch-up service SeeSaw last week, it will be interesting to see what the iPlayer’s usage figures are for February.”

SeeSaw is a new on-demand TV service, showing over 3,000 hours of programmes from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Unlike the iPlayer, it is only available online.