Record number of kids come to the BBC during lockdown

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE


NEWS PROVIDED BY
CBBC

Record-breaking numbers of children turned to the BBC’s iPlayer content, apps and websites during lockdown to keep themselves informed, educated and entertained while at home.
On BBC iPlayer, programme requests for CBeebies and CBBC shows were up by 81% from April to June at an average of 38m every week. Children’s shows accounted for a quarter of all iPlayer requests, with Bing the most watched show during lockdown with more than 66m requests.

The Newsround website continued its incredible online growth of 2019, setting a new weekly record of 1.7m users in the first week of May with the average online audience up around 25% over the first three months of lockdown.

More than 700,000 users have used at least one of the four CBeebies apps every week. Playtime Island relaunched in May to sit alongside Go Explore, Get Creative and Storytime and latest evidence shows one in four pre-schoolers use a BBC Children’s app each week*.

The CBBC website has seen over 500k weekly visitors on average across lockdown, up +57% compared to the same period last year. The CBeebies website has been visited by over 300k unique visitors nearly every week with the average for the same period last year being 257k.

Over on CBeebies Radio, pre-schoolers have been tuning in in their droves with audiences up 151% compared to the same timeframe in 2019.

Sophy Jacob, Acting Director of BBC Children’s and Education, says: “Whilst these have been unprecedented times, we’ve known children are increasingly consuming our content through our digital platforms for many years. These numbers not only reflect how audiences of all ages turn to the BBC in difficult times, but also the need for our content to be available in all of the ways our audience want it. Our young audience is constantly evolving and so it’s incredibly important that we are too."

The number of children coming to BBC iPlayer has been boosted by a new kids’ experience on smart TVs launched on the first day of lockdown, alongside a continued drive to increase boxsets and the depth of content available.

Kids can already find every episode of well-loved shows such as The Next Step, Dumping Ground, Jamie Johnson, Waffle the Wonder Dog and Something Special with almost 1,500 hours of Children’s content available across more than 80 boxsets.

And there’s more to come this summer, new episodes of Horrible Histories, JoJo & Gran Gran and Mystic arrived on iPlayer this week along with the full back catalogue of Get Well Soon and the much anticipated teen drama, Katy Keene is available from 25 July.

Over the next few weeks parents will be able to set up an iPlayer profile for each child in their house on their TV. The new profiles will enable each child to easily keep track of their favourite shows and enable the BBC to better tailor recommendations to their individual interests.

In addition, as part of BBC Children’s plans on YouTube, three new channels for its youngest audience have recently launched. The Bedtime Stories, Swashbuckle and Molly & Mack YouTube channels join the existing CBeebies, CBBC, Mr Tumble & Friends and Hacker. Three more CBBC-aged titles will launch in September with every channel aimed at raising awareness of iPlayer.

*claimed reach based on research with parents carried out BBC Children’s and Ipsos Mori during April-June 2020

Source CBBC

July 22, 2020 7:15am ET by Pressparty  

  Shortlink to this content: https://bit.ly/39iVSEr

SHARE THIS

Latest Press Releases