Apple devices are also used more on Sundays - with a peak at 8am as well as in the evening. For radio listening, which is nearly all through computers, weekend usage is low.

But for handheld devices the listening pattern is more like TV viewing with higher figures at weekends, particularly for sport. Radio 5 live typically makes up about one in seven live stream requests, but on weekend afternoons it can deliver more than 40 percent.

Using the iPlayer for family TV moments
When BBC iPlayer launched on PlayStation 3 last autumn, some of the programmes which did best reflected a young, male audience, as expected given the user profile. This is still true to some extent, with Top Gear and BBC Three comedy still high up the list, and PS3 viewing happening later into the night than average.

However, there is also now a decidedly family viewing flavour to the list of titles, with children’s programmes and pre-watershed films also present.

We think this means PS3s are moving from teenager bedrooms to the living room joining the Nintendo Wii boxes. Viewing through the Wii shows clear skews towards children’s programmes, pre-watershed drama and family films, implying that either the family are watching together or iPlayer is the new incarnation of CBBC babysitting.

Between them, Nintendo Wii and PS3 boxes deliver nearly 10 percent of all programme requests to iPlayer.

Live streaming events
Requests for live streams are very stable. Just over 70 percent of radio programmes accessed were live streams particularly sport coverage, and Radios 1 and 2. The most catch-up requests tended to be for Radio 4 comedy (particularly from the David Mitchell fan club).

For TV, only eight percent of programmes viewed on iPlayer were live and most TV viewing is still done on a computer. We think this is partly because most people would rather watch TV on a big screen, plus many aren’t aware you can watch live TV on the iPlayer.

However the World Cup, Wimbledon and Glastonbury together all boosted live tv viewing. In June, 14 percent of all tv programmes watched on iPlayer were live streams, up from eight percent.

Unsurprisingly, the England matches were the most watched events. Records were broken on a whole range of devices and platforms, and now more people have used this feature it will be interesting to see how it grows.

Alison Button is Audience Research Manager in MC&A.

My job is to make sure we are in touch with what audiences want for the service, by analysing user statistics about what is being used the most or the least, and by asking people directly what they'd choose to change in BBC iPlayer if they could. I also compile the monthly performance packs for iPlayer that we release each month.

We use various methods to gain insight into how audiences feel about BBC iPlayer, including commissioning surveys to see what the majority think, by discussing things in depth, face-to-face, with different types of audiences. We also road-test major changes before we nail the final versions - like the new beta version of BBC iPlayer that you're hopefully playing with right now.

One of the big changes in this latest version is to create separate home-pages for TV and radio programmes, unlike the old website where programmes of both types were shown together.

When the service first launched, it only played TV programmes, and the homepage looked nice and simple. We integrated radio content in July 2008, which we were aware made the homepage a lot busier. This did give us some concerns around the fact that a first-time visitor might have more trouble finding what they wanted with so many choices offered to them - we were definitely not obeying the rule of "less is more".

Of course some people just think "more is more", and in fact we didn't see a big change in people's overall opinions of BBC iPlayer after we added radio to TV. We were still getting fantastic scores from people when they rated the site, which was great, but we did notice a small dip in the tracking score for the "how easy is BBC iPlayer to use", which is what we wanted to avoid. And when we directly asked people if they liked the two media all being mixed together, some people didn't.

When designing the new version of BBC iPlayer, we decided to add even more things to the homepage, like favourites, and we knew we would have to find a way to go back to a simpler, less cluttered design. From the monthly performance packs, we had learned a lot about how people used the iPlayer for TV and radio - for example, radio listening is mainly in the morning, and TV viewing is mainly in the evening, just like in the real world.

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Also, in a typical week, there is only a small cross-over of people who are using the service for both TV and radio - more than 9 out of 10 users are choosing only one or the other.

Plus it was becoming obvious that other analogue habits are also persisting in the new on-demand world. People tend to hunt for a TV programme to watch by browsing across lists of titles, while radio-listeners are drawn much more strongly to a few favourite stations, and look only for their programmes, rather than wanting to see all the offerings from all radio stations mixed up together.

Therefore it seemed like we would be making a sensible decision to offer TV and radio right next to each other, but on separate pages. This would make it easier and quicker for people to find what they want, which ultimately would keep the new homepage simple, something that's been an internal mantra of the new design.

We will be keeping a close key on what people think to check we've made the right decision.

Alison Button is Audience Research Manager, BBC Marketing, Communications & Audiences.