01 Mar 10
Weekly Broadcast News
26th February 2010
BBC iPlayer tops 120m monthly requests
Last month the BBC iPlayer notched up a record 120.3m requests across all available platforms, up from 114.8m in December. For the first time ever, the on-demand platform also passed 100m requests on just online platforms (including games consoles), as 100.5m were submitted last month, up from 93.4m in December. The usage broke down as 68.2m requests for TV and 32.3m for radio. Using data compiled by BBC iStats, the Beeb found that daily requests on just online versions of iPlayer reached 3.2m last month, constituting 2.20m for TV and 1m for radio. The snowy weather which hit the UK between 4th – 10th Jan helped create one of the biggest ever weeks for online iPlayer, with 23.8m requests over the seven-day period. Once again, Top Gear proved to be the most popular TV programme, with episode seven of series 14 pulling in 1.1m requests in early January. On-demand requests still dominate iPlayer usage figures for TV at 92%, but live simulcasts of radio programming reached 74% last month, up from 72% in December. After relaunching in November 2009, the iPlayer platform on Nintendo Wii saw a 1% increase in requests during January to account for 4% of total iPlayer usage. A marketing campaign launched last month by Nintendo resulted in a 26% increase in weekly requests on the Wii compared to December's figures. Programming requests on Sony's PS3 console remained steady in January to account for 8% of total usage. On 12th January, Freesat expanded its iPlayer beta to all set top boxes manufactured by Humax, with a full launch expected before the end of March.
Tweet rate exceeds 50m per day
The micro-blogging behemoth continues to grow, according to new data revealed today by their analytics team, with the number of daily tweets whizzing past another milestone. Last month, Royal Pingdom reported the number of tweets made on Twitter in January 2010 was 1.2bn, or 40m each and every day. That's more tweets per day (39.5m) than the whole of September, 2008. More recent data has been revealed by Kevin Weil, a member of the Twitter analytics team. It illustrates the continued growth of the micro-blogging platform and sees it pass yet another milestone. The number of tweets per day now stands at over 50m, excluding tweets from identified spam accounts. Last week, comScore reported Twitter had 73.5m unique visitors in January, not including visits from mobile, an increase of around 9% from December's 65.2m visitors.
Sky Mobile TV comes to Nokia handsets
Sky has launched a new application bringing its mobile TV service to smartphones manufactured by Nokia.
Available now to download from Nokia's Ovi store, the Sky Mobile TV app allows certain handset owners to watch live Premier League action on their phones and also access breaking headlines from Sky News. The software further enables users to remotely connect to their Sky+ receiver to set recordings on the electronic programming guide. The Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic and 5530 handsets will be first to support the app, but it will soon expand to the Nokia 5230 and Nokia X6. A different service offering non-live highlights of Sky programming will be launched on a further ten handsets in the future. Sky Mobile TV was launched last year on the iPhone, offering live streams of a range of channels - including the Sky Sports portfolio, ESPN, Sky News, Sky Sports News and At The Races.
Nielsen brings TV measurement and engagement service to UK
Nielsen is to launch a service that measures television advertising and programme engagement in the UK.
Nielsen IAG aims to provide advertisers with a fast turnaround, survey-based measurement of all key primetime TV programmes and national advertising. Its consumer research poll is designed to be a “fun” experience, taking the form of a trivia quiz with embedded questions about associated ad breaks. Nielsen says it can provide data for clients within days of a new campaign breaking, through its online panel. It believes the research can help advertisers evaluate the contribution a specific show, time slot and creative execution is making to their campaigns, and to swiftly alter elements if necessary. The service is available for all devices able to access TV, including mobiles and computers. Nielsen IAG has been collecting UK data with a test panel since November 2009. The service has been running in the US since 2000 and counts Ford, Toyota, GM, T-Mobile, Warner Bros, Yahoo!, Kraft and Unilever among its clients. The business model is based on a one- to three-year contract, with Nielsen taking a percentage of the total media spend. In 2006, NBC became the first network to guarantee the viewer engagement levels of its programming to clients Verizon, J&J and Toyota based on Nielsen IAG metrics. Nielsen is keen to stress that the service is not a trading currency, such as BARB, but a tool to help with campaign planning and creative execution.
Virgin Media revenue up thanks to Broadband
Virgin Media has reported a leap in consumer cable revenues in its financial fourth quarter as it unveiled plans for a new high-speed 100Mb broadband service. The firm reported revenues of £980m in the period, up from £953m in the fourth quarter a year ago. However, it registered a pre-tax loss of £94.5m, reduced from £188.9m a year earlier. The group’s core areas of cable and mobile were both up in revenues, the former jumping from £627m to £640m and the latter up from £134m to £139m. Virgin Media disclosed the average amount cable customers were paying in the quarter rose by 5.8% – bolstered by subscribers opting for a bundling of three products from fixed telephony, mobile, pay-TV and broadbrand. An increase in broadband sign-ups was due to a lift in demand for higher speed connections – with a 45% year-on-year leap in customers on 20Mb or faster connections. The company also unveiled plans for the launch of its 100Mb service by the end of the year; the fastest current connection is 50Mb.Virgin Media said its TV subscriber base had increased by 34,000 to over 3.7m in the period, of which 23% is made up by its V+ service.
Mail Online most popular newspaper site in January
Daily Mail & General Trust's website network, Mail Online, was the most popular UK newspaper website in January, with 2.16m unique browsers per day on average. January's ABCe report marks a move away from using monthly unique users as the headline metric for determining the traffic of UK national newspaper websites, with the focus now on average daily unique browsers, which is regarded as a better measure of regular visitors. On this basis Mail Online recorded a 13.5% month-on-month increase and 56.8% year-on-year increase in unique daily browsers in January, according to the latest ABCe figures published this week. Mail Online recorded 35.9m monthly unique users. Guardian.co.uk, which has been the biggest website in terms of monthly unique users since September, was in second place under the new system, with 1.9m unique browsers per day on average.
Project Canvas 'to launch within a year'
Project Canvas, the BBC-led joint venture to upgrade the Freesat and Freeview platforms with video-on-demand services, is reportedly targeting a commercial launch within the next 12 months. According to BT Vision chief executive Marc Watson, the project - which also includes ITV, Channel 4, Five, BT and TalkTalk among its members - will firstly target the 10 million households with Freeview on their main set.
SeesSaw launches £5m marketing campaign tonight
SeeSaw will tonight unleash the opening stage of a £5m marketing campaign to promote its recently launched web TV service. The campaign, which begins with a series of ten-second teaser adverts, will premiere tonight on Channel 4 before broadening out to ITV, Five and other digital channels, along with high-traffic websites. Arqiva-owned SeeSaw hopes to position itself as a household name in the emerging online TV and video on-demand market.
Snippets usually taken from the following sources: MediaGuardian.co.uk / BBC / MediaTel / WARC / Digital Spy / brandrepublic.com / nma.co.uk / broadcastnow.co.uk / Ofcom / T3