The BBC has announced record breaking content requests during January 2014, breaking the 300 million barrier for the first time.
According to a newly released BBC iPlayer performance pack, January 2014 was the biggest month ever for the on-demand service.
In January alone, BBC iPlayer saw over 315 million TV and Radio requests with an average of 10.2 million daily requests.
Both of these figures are like nothing the service has ever seen, helped along by the new series of Sherlock.
In fact, the Episode One – The Empty Hearse generated over 3.6 million requests on its own, meaning it is now the third most requested programme on BBC iPlayer ever.
The popularity of tablets and smartphones has also had an impact on the increasing BBC iPlayer requests. The figures show that 40 per cent of BBC iPlayer requests come from mobiles and tablets, equating to 127 million requests overall in January, which is another record breaker.
In early January, the BBC announced that BBC iPlayer tablet viewing had overtaken computers for the first time.
“With new gadgets being at the top of many Christmas wish lists, we see a lot of new device accessing BBC iPlayer over the holiday period,” said Dan Taylor, Head of BBC iPlayer. “2013 truly proved to be the year of the tablet and after they were all unwrapped, Boxing Day saw tablet viewing overtake computer viewing for the first time in iPlayer history.”
It seems like this has evened out since the Christmas peak, but mobile viewing is still strong.
Read more: Best TVs 2014
