BBC records best year ever for iplayer viewers

A RECORD number of people are using the BBC’S iplayer as Britain becomes nation of binge watchers.

New figures show iplayer recorded its best year ever in 2017 after having introduced more box sets and old hits from its archive.

Viewers streamed 272 million programmes per month on average last year, with total requests growing to 3.3 billion, representing an 11 per cent increase on the previous year.

The most popular show of 2017 was the first episode of natural history series Blue Planet II, with 4.8 million requests, followed by the opening episodes of new Tom Hardy period drama Taboo, and Doctor Foster series 2, the BBC said.

The iplayer underwent a significant change last year as BBC bosses attempted to quench the public’s thirst for “binge watching” series. As a result its offering is now more comparable to Netflix, through which a large selection of box sets and movies are available on demand.

Series such as Peter Kay’s Car Share, Motherland, Top of the Lake: China Girl and Feud: Bette and Joan, were made available to watch in full immediately after the first episode had been broadcast.

Other shows such as Taboo, Apple Tree Yard, Blue Planet II and Doctor Who remained on iplayer throughout their run and were made available to watch as a box set for 30 days after the final episode of the series aired.

At Christmas, a host of box sets and classic programmes returned to iplayer so that people could watch them over the holidays, contributing to the online viewing platform’s best week ever over the festive week.