UKTV chief executive Darren Childs says he expects the channel group to grow its audience share by around 3-4% during 2015, despite the lack of measurement of online platforms.
“Barb measurement will catch up and it will probably show growth in proportion with what’s happening on the main channels,” he told the Broadcasting Press Guild. “Many of our competitors are losing share while we’re growing share. Even though the data is mitigating big chunks of audience we’re still growing”.
The growth is against the tide of a loss of share by big groups such as ITV, while UKTV itself has now overtaken the Sky branded channels in terms of audience share.
UKTV is available on Sky, Virgin, and Talk Talk among others and runs channel brands including Watch, Dave, Gold and Eden.
Childs said he thought the ad market would in 2015 see the strongest real terms growth for 20 years.
“Everyone’s saying TV’s dead and no ones watching TV anymore and all the advertisers are piling behind TV like they never have done before.”
Over the Christmas holiday period Gold will be rebranded as Christmas Gold with an emphasis on classic shows from Christmas past.
