BBC iPlayer should support radio show downloads sometime next year

It turns out there's a reason why iPlayer hasn't supported downloads for radio shows in the UK: the executive wing of the BBC couldn't implement this feature without explicit permission from the BBC Trust, which in turn had to seek advice from the national regulator, Ofcom. Fortunately, these hoops have been hurdled and the Corporation now says it expects to enable downloads for iPlayer users "in 2014," giving them seven days to download a show after broadcast, up to 30 days to store it, and then seven days to listen to it once it's opened. This'll no doubt prove to be a popular feature, but since regular TV downloads still don't work on the iPlayer app for Android, we're kinda hoping the devs get that fixed first.