BBC reveals New Year’s Day as iPlayer’s best day ever, with over 3.1m coming from mobile
New Year’s Day 2014 was iPlayer’s best-ever day so far, with nearly 11 million requests for TV and radio programmes in one day alone, the BBC has revealed.
It was also revealed that mobile accounted for just under a third of these views, 3.1m, while tablets set a record of 1.3m unique browsers on Boxing Day before also setting a new record on New Year’s Day with 1.5m.
Dr Who – The Time of the Doctor was the most popular programme, followed by Eastenders and Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special. This differs from Christmas Day, when Mrs Brown’s Boys was the most watched.
Dan Taylor, the head of BBC iPlayer in BBC Future Media, said: “Almost a million of you downloaded the iPlayer mobile and tablet apps over the festive period (Saturday 21 December to New Year’s Day), 941,000 of you to be exact, adding to the 20 million app downloads iPlayer reached in October.
“Christmas Day TV is all about families gathering around the biggest screen of the house and most viewing on the day is via broadcast TV. BBC iPlayer has an important role as a complementary platform for BBC broadcast programmes, especially on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, when requests on iPlayer really start to peak and you have time to catch-up on the must-watch Christmas programmes.”
In 2013, iPlayer saw 102m requests for TV and Radio programmes (80m for TV, 22m for radio) throughout the festive period.