Category: Radio

Date: 29.03.2005
Printable version

Re-launched Radio Player boosts on-demand listening by 25 per cent

Online listening to digital-only networks up 83 per cent on the year

Total mp3 downloads hit 270,000 after four months

The new BBC Radio Player - re-launched at the end of January - exceeded all expectations in February as on-demand radio listening raced to a record nine million requests (up by more than 25 per cent on January) and total listening hours (live and on-demand) reached 11.2 million for the month.

The growth in internet radio has also given a huge boost to the BBC's digital-only radio services - 1Xtra, 6 Music, BBC 7, the Asian Network and Five Live Sports Extra have seen their online listening increase by 83 per cent over the last year, now totalling 2.3 million hours a month.

In addition, the three programmes taking part in the current mp3 download trial - In Our Time (Radio 4), Fighting Talk (Radio Five Live) and TX Unlimited (1Xtra) - have been downloaded a total of 270,000 times in the four months since the trial began.

Radio 1 also had a successful February, as the site broke through the 50 million page impressions barrier for the first time.

Other notable results from February include:

1Xtra attracted record unique user agents thanks in part to the network's Trinidad Carnival coverage which generated over 600,000 page impressions

Radio 4's Interactive Bafta Award-winning Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy adventure game experienced a second wind following the addition of graphics submitted by users - 40,000 unique user agents logged on in February

Posting on the Radio 2 message board had doubled in the last six months, with more than 20,000 messages posted in February.

Top 30 on-demand programmes - February 2005