Rewind those iPlayer numbers for me
Posted in Media, Digital, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs May 20th, 2008 by Branwell Johnson
The BBC’s iPlayer has seen 75 million streams or downloads since launch – hurrah for the technology and hurrah for the licence fee payers funding the initiative. But what do the stats really mean?
According to Nigel Walley, managing director of Decipher, there’s something of a smoke and mirrors trick going on as he points out in an article in mad.co.uk’s Tech Weekly bulletin.
It’s all in the context. He points out that while the numbers the BBC are quoting seem large its likely that 75 per cent of the downloaded programmes were watched by one person at a time – you don’t get a crowd crushing round a computer screen to watch Waking The Dead. So in TV terms the aggregated audience for the iPlayer so far is about the total audience to watch the past six episodes of Eastenders.
Other programming download offerings are on the horizon with Project Kangaroo, the combined BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 venture, waiting to receive the seal of approval from regulatory authorities. Now this initiative is to be funded by advertising and is one of the examples media soothsayers like to cite as showing how changes in TV viewing models are going to accelerate faster than Lewis Hamilton off the starting grid.
But if the downloads over a month are still lower in number than the combined average viewing figures of all programming for a Saturday night on ITV, is this really going to herald a brave new world?
To read the related news story visit mad.co.uk
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Tags BBC’s iPlayer, Digital, TV, BBC Worldwide
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namrita’s comment is....
I’ve been really impressed with the BBC iplayer. I thought it was going to be another case of waiting ages for a video to download and then crashing and stalling whilst watching it but it wasn’t at all like that. You can actually watch a whole programme with no problems! It’s great for those times when you missed a programme and forgot to set sky plus!
Posted May 20th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
neilperkin’s comment is....
I think these are still impressive numbers. It’s had a lot of promo on the Beeb but considering the low base of IPTV I think this is meaningful. The player is a fantastic piece of technology which I think will just grow and grow. With the combined quality of content that will be available on Kangaroo, the future is bright for on demand methinks.
Posted May 28th, 2008 at 11:14 am
reallyglobal’s comment is....
Both the BBC and ITV are losing enormous revenue streams and viewer figures by only being available in the UK. If they removed Geo-blocking (perhaps for a small fee), people across the world would be watching.
I live in France and would love to watch recent BBC programmes. I already pay, via cable, for BBC Prime (with ancient programmes i.e Top Gear from five years ago)and BBC World.
But, thanks to Geoblocking, I cannot download anything using iplayer when in France and nothing from ITV. On rare visits to the UK, I download as much as I can.
And we do gather around the TV to watch!
How short sighted - and lots of money lost….
Posted May 28th, 2008 at 11:32 am
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