UKTV says its investment in original production has paid off, while its on demand service UKTV Play has seen a 75 per cent increase in audiences year-on-year.
The commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive says eight out of the top TV shows on free-to-air channel Dave were originals, while Murder On The Blackpool Express, starring Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson, has been watched by over 1.8 million viewers, contributing to the largest growth in Gold audiences in 13 years.
Darren Childs, CEO, said: “We’re creating our own IP through UKTV Originals at a greater scale than ever before, and that’s allowed us to drive on demand viewing to new highs, as well as bringing new audiences to linear television”.
UKTV Play, which is available across a number of platforms and online, generated 100 million views in a year for the first time.
“Our new and exclusive shows are driving audiences to our fastest-growing brand, UKTV Play. That ensures we can offer advertisers data-driven targeted advertising on demand, as well as advertising to mass broadcast audiences through our large, established, linear broadcast channels.”
This year, all shows on UKTV Play were added to Amazon Fire TV’s Universal Search, the first broadcaster in the UK to do so. 1,000 hours of catch up TV also became available to Virgin Media Ireland customers, and in June, all UKTV channels became available via UKTV Play in the Catch-up section of Sky+ and Sky Q. Performance on Sky On Demand increased by 55% against the yearly average.
