MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC has anounced that the Winter Olympics is one of BBC Sport's most watched interactive television applications.

BBC states that 3.99 million digital satellite viewers have accessed the service making it the fourth most used application from BBC Sport compared to Summer Olympics 2004 - 9.0 million, Wimbledon 2005 - 4.4 million and the football World Cup 2002 - 4.0 million.

The Olympics are doing well on BBC Two, with coverage contributing an average audience of 2.2 million, 14.2 per cent share to the channel. Peak audiences so far have been 4.9 million for ice skating on 20 February, 4.5 million for the men's skeleton, 4.4 million for the figure skating pairs, 4.2 million for the men's luge, and 4 million for the opening ceremony.

Shelley Rudman's silver medal for the UK in the women's skeleton peaked at 3.4 million on 16 February and was the most watched channel at the time for the five minutes of the last few runs.

So far, the audience profile for the Winters is skewing slightly towards females (53 per cent), although share of viewing is slightly higher amongst men. The broadband AV streaming at bbc.co.uk/winterolympics is proving popular with an average of 150,000 page views each weekday.

There were almost as many page views accessed of the AV highlights of Rudman winning skeleton silver the day after it happened as the day itself. The value of on-demand highlights for those that missed it live is further demonstrated by the women's snowboard cross, with 33,000 page views on Saturday - three times the number from the previous day.