BBC's iPlayer Reaches 6.3 Million Unique Visitors in the U.K. in February, Nielsen

LONDON -- The BBC's iPlayer, a destination site for BBC news and entertainment programming, is enjoying rapid growth in the U.K. Unique monthly visitors reached 6.3 million in February, according the most most recent data compiled by Nielsen.

Time spent on the site averages 18 minutes, Nielsen finds.

Nielsen does not compile video views and the BBC has not released its February numbers. For January, the BBC served 120 million videos, the network has said.

Meanwhile at comScore Media Metrix, the number of unique visitors to the iPlayer, registered just over 4 million. The comScore February numbers are not yet available.

Last Monday, I spoke with Mary Hockaday, Head of the BBC Newsroom. She speaks about the simplicity of the the iPlayer and its success.

The iPlayer is geo-blocked and cannot be seen outside of the U.K.

Hockaday was a panelist at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable held at the Guardian. Much more of my interview with Mary about online video journalism to come. I interviewed her at the offices of the Guardian.

See this big feature on evolution of the BBC in The Economist.

Andy Plesser, Executive Producer