New currency

Mixed metaphor time. Charlotte Moore, keeper of the BBC iPLayer, has come to the parapets of Besieged Broadcasting House, with what looks like a nice pot of boiling oil. The figures for iPlayer requests for 2019 (delivered a month earlier than usual) look impressive, topped by 'Killing Eve', at 40.4m.

But this oil turns out to be a band new audience currency. It's a cumulative list, counting every request across Series 2 (eight episodes). So Series 1 was still available over to 10 months counted so far, and that has totalled an impressive 22.3m.

Yet, and yet, this is not how we used to measure success. In 2018, six episodes of Bodyguard totalled 42.5m requests - but the list was presented to the media episode by episode. So the published chart for the year was topped by Bodyguard Episode 1, at 10.8m. Killing Eve's opener that year scored 9.2m. Like for like, this year's chart was topped by Line of Duty, Episode 1 Series, at 5.8m - not quite so impressive. And the first episode of Killing Eve scored 5.5m requests over 2019 so far.

This new cumulative approach doesn't help comparisons with the past, or tell you how many people stayed with a whole series. Would the BBC really try to add up all viewers for all episodes of EastEnders over a year, and say that was in any way meaningful or useful ?  The traditional approach for a drama series is to report the average audience over a season - and we should ask the BBC to get back to that as soon as possible.

It is likely that there will be an improvement in the total of iPlayer requests over the year. In the 12 months of 2018, it was 3.6bn. In the ten months counted so far of 2019, it stands at 3.55bn.