Merlin and Jimmy Savile documentary help BBC iPlayer to record month Across television and radio, an ongoing increase in viewing and listening via smartphones and tablets continued. They accounted for 49 million requests, or 23 per cent, in October, compared to 16 million, or nine per cent, a year earlier. Radio listening actually decreased slightly, by two per cent, driven by a nine per cent fall in requests from computers. Last month the BBC completely overhauled the Radio iPlayer on the web and introduced a new mobile app, in an effort to promote its radio stations as separate brands online. For television, most requests are from viewers catching up, while for radio three quarters of requests are for live broadcasts. The figures cover live and catch-up viewing across iPlayer on the web, smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes, games consoles and connected televisions. "One of our key goals for iPlayer in 2012 was to take it beyond the PC and onto a host of different devices, from mobile smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and games consoles," said Dave Price, the head of BBC iPlayer. It is expected that this Christmas will see new records, boosted partly by the arrival of iPlayer on on up to 6.7 million Sky+ boxes at the end of October, after the BBC and BSkyB settled a long-running fued.