The BBC reports that requests for television programmes via its popular broadband iPlayer catch-up TV service in the UK have grown by 81% since last year. Some 116.4 million requests were made for the service during February 2010 (68.7 million for TV programmes) and at an average of 1.4 million users per day.

BBC iPLAYER TOP 10
1. EastEnders Live 19/02/2010 (1,131,000 requests)
2. Mock the Week Series 8 Ep.3 (698,000)
3. Mock the Week Series 8 Ep.4 (651,000)
4. Mock the Week Series 8 Ep.5 (644,000)
5. EastEnders 18/02/10 (564,000)
6. Hotter Than My Daughter Ep.1 (531,000)
7. EastEnders 15/02/10 (524,000)
8. EastEnders Live: The Aftermath 19/02/10 (486,000)
9. Film: Legally Blonde 16/09/09 (478,000)
10. EastEnders 12/02/10 (473,000)

On-demand (catch-up) content makes up the great majority of TV programme requests (in February only 8% of requests were for live simulcast streams), yet over two-thirds of requests for radio streams are for live programmes. Users of iPlayer also tend to be aged under-55.


It's easy to see why some big ISPs might be concerned about the impact of the iPlayer service upon their networks, despite the fact that customers are already supposed to be paying for what they use.

The BBC has previously threatened to name and shame any broadband provider that throttled traffic to iPlayer (here), although there's still no sign of that happening.

UPDATE 19th March 2011

The BBC has also said this week that its iPlayer Traffic Management warning system, which will work a bit like road traffic lights (Red, Amber and Green), will be fully detailed sometime this spring.