David Farnor | On 04, Oct 2015

The Great British Bake Off has proven a recipe for streaming success, bumping BBC iPlayer out of its summer lull early.

The nation’s favourite cookery show was the most popular programme on BBC iPlayer in August 2015 – not just accounting for the most-watched episode on the site, but the four most-watched episodes. Episodes 1 to 4 of the latest season were streamed or downloaded over 1.5 million times each, racking up a total of 7.3 million requests.

Views of each episode dropped off by just 200,000, lower than the usual decline, as those catching up refused to switch off – a feat that’s particularly impressive, given the event series’ primary popularity as a live programme. The only other show to get such a consistently strong response is EastEnders: the soap opera made up the next 15 most popular episodes. The only other title to join the top 20 was The Scandalous Lady W, which aroused 897,000 requests.

Bake Off’s boost took the total number of TV requests on BBC iPlayer to 226 million, up 11 per cent on July 2015 and up 24 per cent on August last year. There were an average of 9 million daily requests on BBC iPlayer in August, up on July’s figures, with average TV daily requests increasing from 6.6 to 7.3 month on month.

Other popular titles included the return of Ripper Street Season 3, with Episode 1 enjoying 625,000 requests, while the most-watched film on the service was Ill Manors, with 438,000 requests.

For the first time, last month’s figures also now include titles that are only available on BBC iPlayer. While no exclusives appeared on the most popular shows in August, it will be interesting to see whether any of the VOD service’s exclusives can break the charts.

Photo: BBC/Love Productions/Mark Bourdillon

Add to Watchlist