Shropshire Star

One Love Manchester concert beats General Election for iPlayer views

The momentous live broadcast topped requests for Poldark and Doctor Who.

Published
One Love Manchester.

The One Love Manchester concert became the most-watched BBC programme on iPlayer in June, beating the general election, Poldark and Doctor Who in viewer numbers.

More than two million people (2,057,000) watched the show via the online streaming service as it was broadcast live on June 4, with stars such as Niall Horan, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Coldplay’s Chris Martin joining Ariana Grande to pay tribute to the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

It beat audience numbers for the first hours of the big UK vote coverage four days later, which was requested by 1,314,000 people.

Releasing the figures, the BBC said June proved to be the biggest months for live programme requests on iPlayer (21%) since the Olympics last August.

At the top of the list for drama, and third overall, was the first episode of Broken, starring Sean Bean as a northern Catholic priest.

It was requested by 1,255,000 viewers, followed by an episode of EastEnders with 1,118,000 requests.

Episode eight of the latest series of Doctor Who came in fifth for requests (1,038,000) followed by the second episode of new drama Paula (992,000) and the Poldark season three debut (934,000).

The coverage of Glastonbury Festival was also popular among live broadcasts, with a total of 4.5 million viewers tuning in to watch over both iPlayer and the BBC’s Glastonbury web page.

Sunday night headliner Ed Sheeran proved to be the most popular act, attracting 955,000 online viewers, followed by the Foo Fighters’ fireworks-fuelled show on the Saturday, which was watched by 918,000 people.

Friday night’s Radiohead performance came in third with an online audience of 707,000, followed by Barry Gibb (363,000), Katy Perry (313,000), Liam Gallagher (280,000), and the secret last-minute Elbow gig (276,000).

According to the broadcaster, 256 million in total made iPlayer requests last month, marking an increase of 12% on June 2016.

It came amid the introduction of the new iPlayer scheme, which now requires viewers to register for a BBC account before they are able to log in and use the service.

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