Numerology

The BBC is oddly coy about some figures. Yesterday Press Gazette reported Comscore figures for websites covering the third quarter of 2020 - and top of the table were the cluster of 70 sites owned by Reach, with an average 42.1 million monthly visitors, 3.5 million more than second-place BBC. 

The BBC told Press Gazette that its own audience data shows that the number of unique browsers to BBC sites has increased in recent years  – driven largely by increased audience to BBC News online. "The BBC’s own performance data records a much higher number of unique visitors to their sites than Comscore’s figures."

Meanwhile in almost-year-long figures for BBC Sounds, we were told that, from January to November, there were 1.1 billion UK plays of radio, music and podcasts on BBC Sounds. Over a similar period in 2019 (February - November 2019) there were 630 million plays. And then - "new data also shows there were 460 million plays of podcasts and on demand radio programmes on BBC Sounds in the UK in 2020, with a 21% increase in podcast listening since the start of the year."  Doesn't that suggest that 630m 'plays' were simply people listening to existing BBC radio stations online or via the app and Alexa ?  And what's happened to the previously-quoted 3.6m users ?