TV viewing on the BBC iPlayer fell in March, but while the figure is the second consecutive fall, it’s likely the 9% drop is related to measurement issues.
The BBC said it estimated around 10 million requests were likely to be missing from the 278 million requests made to the iPlayer in March.
With the assumed requests included the total is still lower than the 299 million requests recorded in February and the 301 million from March 2014. However, there have been minor fluctuations throughout the lifetime of the player. The high watermark of 343 million was recorded in January 2015 as viewers caught up with Christmas television.
In March it was the controversial motoring show Top Gear and talent contest The Voice that drew in the audience. The remake of BBC drama Poldark (pictured) drew 1.2 million requests for its first episode.
It’s not the first time that data has gone absent. Some TV request data is also missing for 2014 – about 3.5m requests in August and 11.5m requests in September from computer devices, and about 6m requests are missing in November, across all device types.
There were also issues in the radio data after changes in the playout system removed live sport from some streaming devices.
