UKTV’s new seven-channel portfolio has seen growth of 4% in 2019.
UKTV Original commissions saw their best year ever accounting for seven out of the top 10 programmes across the network.
Drama and Yesterday both saw gains in 2019 and finished the year as two of the top 10 non-PSB channels. Drama achieved its best year ever since its launch in 2013. Flagship comedy channel Dave is ranked as the number one non-PSB channel for 16-34s.
Marcus Arthur, President of BBC Studios UK & Ireland and CEO of UKTV said: “We are a significant investor in British creativity and committed to working with new and established on and off-screen talent and producers, which has been demonstrated by our strong slate and success in 2019. We’ve more than doubled our development budget in the last 12 months and worked with nine new production partners.”
Top performing UKTV Originals include Taskmaster, Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes (Gold), The Cockfields (Gold), Dial M for Middlesbrough (Gold), Emma Willis: Delivering Babies (W), Traces (Alibi), Hypothetical (Dave) and Expedition with Steve Backshall, co-commissioned with BBC Two (Dave) among others.
Meanwhile, UKTV’s channel brands saw on-going success with BBC archive. Seven out of 10 BBC archive shows delivered the highest percentage of ratings across the year. Strong performing shows included; Last of the Summer Wine, New Tricks, Top Gear, Death in Paradise, Only Fools and Horses, Father Brown and QI XL. Death in Paradise and Call the Midwife attracted the fifth and eighth biggest audiences across the network with 618,000 viewers and 528,000 on top performing episodes respectively.
The BBC Studios platform was reshaped in June 2019 following the split of the business with Discovery Communications.