The BBC has announced that its flagship iPlayer service will offer radio programmes up to a month after their broadcast from 2014, harmonising its radio and TV offer.
At present radio fans have just seven days to stream their favourite shows before they vanish for good but, starting next year, they will have seven days to download content, 30 days to store it and an additional seven days to view the content once opened.
A BBC spokesman said: "We are delighted with the Trust’s decision. We will now start work to bring download functionality to BBC iPlayer Radio, a process which we anticipate will take some months yet."
This follows a decline in the number of iPlayer requests to 257m in April from 272m in March - an anomaly in an otherwise consistent growth pattern which the broadcaster is attributing to the advent of British Summer Time and the Easter holidays.