Auntie's podcasts blooming

The BBC had a record month for radio downloads in March 2006, with 12m on-demand requests and more than 20m hours of programmes listened to online.

BBC Radio 1 led the way with four million hours of live listening and a record 3.5m unique user agents.

BBC Radio 2 contributed three million live listening hours and more than a million on-demand listening hours in the month, while BBC Five Live Sports Extra's coverage of the India v England Test Series contributed to 500,000 hours of live online listening during March.

The company's podcasts also grew considerably, adding a million downloads to finish at 2.8m for March.

The Today Programme's 8.10 Interview podcast was the top performer with 474,357 downloads, closely followed by new daily podcasts from Scott Mills (330,471 downloads), the BBC Radio NewsPod (147,664) and Daily Mayo (61,254).

Of the weekly podcasts, Chris Moyles remained at the top spot with 441,832 downloads.

"Overall traffic to BBC Radio websites exceeded 290m page impressions for the first time in March, with a record 9.3m unique user agents logging on over the course of the month," said a BBC statement.