Virgin Media iPlayer channel: one month on
Monday, July 21st, 2008Doctor Who and Dot Cotton top downloads
The BBC iPlayer service on Virgin Media saw more than 10m viewers make use of its service in June, according to the first batch of figures released by the quad play company. The June figures are significantly up from the 1.4 million views of BBC content via Virgin when the service was launched in May.
Virgin Media, the first Digital TV platform to give the BBC iPlayer catch-up service its own stand alone menu, managed to attract half as many viewings as the iPlayer website did in June.
Pressing the ‘red button’ on remotes whilst watching a BBC channel on Virgin Media TV brings up the iPlayer menu, without the user having to directly access the internet. Among the top viewings were repeats of EastEnders, Doctor Who and the frankly disturbing kids show In the Night Garden.
Malcolm Wall, the chief executive of content at Virgin Media, said that the figures underlined the “continued success of our on-demand offering,” a sentiment echoed by Rahul Chakkara, the BBC controller for TV platforms, who said: “The initial success on Virgin Media underlines the multiplatform appeal of the BBC iPlayer proposition.”
The iPlayer, which is available to all UK viewers who have an internet connection, has been running fully since Christmas and pulls in an average of 1.5 million users each week.
