The BBC’s Head of Audience Measurement (HAM?) Jo Hamilton has written a post on the BBC Internet Blog explaining the corporation’s move towards sharing data on iPlayer usage.

The numbers give new insights into how people use the service, who they are and which programmes are most popular.

The data is quite rich and shows us how many people watched via live simulcast versus on demand and even how many people watch iPlayer on each platform – PC, mobile or games console.

What the data shows is as many men as women use iPlayer, with the typical iPlayer user younger than the typical TV viewer or radio listener. As you might expect, the vast majority of people access it via computer, but mobile and games console usage is growing.

Question Time on 22nd Oct, which had received widespread press attention received 0.9m requests across 22nd-31st and had a clear “halo effect” with user requests going up for other TV programmes in mid-series such as Life, Merlin and Buzzcocks.  For radio, football coverage, The Chris Moyles Show and The News Quiz were among most popular titles.

It’s good to see the Beeb making this level of data available to the public although the choice in data format (MS PowerPoint) is perhaps slightly misguided as it prevents many from accessing the file. Also, a malleable data format such as a spreadsheet would perhaps allow others to create better visualisations of the figures. The fact that the slideshow wasn’t displayed in an embed format was also picked up in the comments thread.

Fear not peeps… I’ve uploaded the prezzo to GoogleDocs and you can view it below.