The BBC reported an increase in streaming over the festive fortnight, with EastEnders, The Traitors and Hey Duggee in the top 3 streamed programmes.
On BBC iPlayer, every day across the ‘festive fortnight’ – 20th December to 2nd January – programmes were streamed more times on iPlayer this year than last year – with 23rd December, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day showing the highest growth year on year (+25% or more). The week of Boxing Day to New Year’s Day marked iPlayer’s best-ever ‘festive week’ with programmes streamed 165m times.
On New Year’s Day, programmes were streamed +30% more than last year – making it iPlayer’s third best day of all time, only behind two days during the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Meanwhile on BBC Sounds, there were a record 57.7 million plays of all content between 20th December and 2nd January, boosted by three new Miss Marple stories, new drama The Dark Is Rising and the Christmas Sounds music offer.
Charlotte Moore, BBC’s Chief Content Officer says:
“Over the festive season, audiences chose the BBC in record breaking numbers on BBC iPlayer and Sounds for our world class content signalling a brilliant start to 2023 on the BBC.”
BBC iPlayer: Christmas and New Year Top 10
Where multiple episodes were available, the figure includes combined total of steams of all episodes. It’s possible a single user may have watched multiple episodes and counted more than once.
| Programme Brand | Streams |
|---|---|
| EastEnders | 23,719,000 |
| The Traitors | 12,396,000 |
| Hey Duggee | 10,177,000 |
| His Dark Materials | 8,160,000 |
| Bluey | 6,169,000 |
| Strike | 6,131,000 |
| Bing | 5,316,000 |
| Happy Valley | 5,049,000 |
| BBC News | 4,036,000 |
| Motherland | 3,968,000 |
BBC iPlayer: Top 10 individual episodes
| Programme Episodes | Streams |
|---|---|
| EastEnders – 25/12/2022 | 2,490,000 |
| EastEnders – 26/12/2022 | 2,363,000 |
| EastEnders – 29/12/2022 | 2,254,000 |
| EastEnders – 23/12/2022 | 2,094,000 |
| EastEnders – 20/12/2022 | 2,037,000 |
| EastEnders – 27/12/2022 | 2,034,000 |
| EastEnders – 28/12/2022 | 1,956,000 |
| Call the Midwife – Christmas Special 2022 | 1,910,000 |
| EastEnders – 22/12/2022 | 1,884,000 |
| The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse | 1,817,000 |
Notes regarding stats provided: The BBC doesn’t indicate if the uplift in streamers is due to existing users streaming more, or if they are attracting new users. It’s also unclear if viewers are turning to the iPlayer in lieu of paid subscriptions that have been cancelled.