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2.5 million tune into BBC coverage of The Stones at Glastonbury
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 1 July 2013
Opinion seems divided about the BBC’s most extensive coverage of the Glastonbury Festival ever. Some have raved about the unprecedented access living room festival-goers enjoyed this year, while others (led, of course, by the various newspapers who need little excuse to dis the Beeb) have moaned about the choice of acts screened on the main channels, the amount of between-set chatter from irritating BBC presenters, or just the way the festival dominated the schedules over the weekend.
Nevertheless, 2.5 million people tuned in to watch the hour of the Rolling Stones’ generally acclaimed headline set that the broadcaster had permission to air, according to the only slightly made-up overnight TV ratings. Which, while – as the Daily Mail was very keen to point out – was slightly less than the audience that tuned into the repeat of ‘Die Hard’ on BBC1, is still a very impressive figure indeed for this kind of programme, especially considering the other Glasto options viewers had at the same time via other BBC channels and platforms.
1.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the Arctic Monkey’s headline set on Friday evening, while the live streams the BBC was offering from the uber-fest attracted a million unique visitors on Friday and Saturday alone. That’s an 87% increase on the figures enjoyed by Glasto streams in 2011; possibly a result of the increased amount of content available via that route this time, or the growth in ownership of net-connected devices in the last two years, or last year’s Olympics educating more viewers how to access programmes in that way.
