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The service attracted over 2 million unique users in January, with up to a quarter of a million shows being watched every day. This figure has now doubled to half a million shows watched per day.

The latest statistics released by the BBC show that 17 million programmes have been watched in the first

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seven weeks since its launch.

"While it's still early days, early indications are that BBC iPlayer is having a significant effect in attracting new users to bbc.co.uk," says Ashley Highfield, director of BBC Future Media and Technology.

"To build on this initial success, we continue to reach out to audiences wherever they are, and we now have BBC-branded 'channels' on Yahoo! and partnerships with MSN and Blinkx going live soon."

The BBC has also announced that it will be adding new features to the iPlayer service, including a listing of the ten most popular shows, recently added and 'last chance' content, all of which will be dynamically updated every ten minutes.

Earlier this week the BBC released a range of content on the iTunes service. Users within the UK can now download content from ten television series for £1.89 an episode, or a discounted price for a whole series.