In its recent Annual Report and Accounts, the BBC announced that its iPlayer service beat its streaming record set just the year before. And beat it badly.

In total, iPlayer users streamed 6.6 billion programs over 2021 – 22. Performing 8% better than the previous year, the broadcaster’s platform saw, on average, 12.1 million sign-ins per week (source: Broad​bandTVnews​.com).

According to the BBC site, the Annual Report and Accounts measures how the BBC has ​“delivered (its) mission and public purposes and the extent to which the commitments set out in the Annual plan … have been met.”

Setting new streaming records certainly meets commitments, and then some, for the national broadcaster of the U.K., which this year celebrates a century in operation.

This year began with a bang for the service, recording all-time highs of 13.3 million sign-ins, and on average streaming 54 million hours per week.

On January 2, 2022 the BBC achieved its highest-ever single day numbers, when viewers streamed 22 million programs. And from December 27, 2021 through January 3, 2022, programs from the UK broadcaster were streamed 141 million times on its iPlayer — up 6% from the year before.

In hours per week on average, time spent streaming on BBC iPlayer during 2021 – 22 rose to 44.5 million.

To achieve these streaming numbers, the BBC needs reliability built into its streaming technology.

For rock-solid performance, the BBC iPlayer deploys Unified Origin from Unified Streaming to handle their on-demand workflows, which, according to figures in the annual report, equate to 79% of the total number of requests.

For the BBC Unified tech just works: from the first time a program is streamed, to the 6.6 billionth.

For more information on the partnership between the BBC and Unified Streaming, which dates back to 2013, please refer to this case study.

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