UKTV added over one million registered users to its streaming service in the last year, growing the business by 27%.
It follows a year of increased investment in UKTV Play that saw it reach 6.45 million registrants.
“UKTV Play has undergone product updates and a major brand refresh, while thousands of hours of new content have been added to the service, resulting in growth of over a quarter,” said UKTV CEO Marcus Arthur. “We’ve also made great strides in our digital content strategy, producing more original short-form content helping to drive over 12 million views to our Dave YouTube channel, up 42% year-on-year, and achieving over one million downloads to our new suite of podcasts.
Growth within UKTV Play was boosted by the addition of over 3,000 hours of new content to the service, a combination of acquired content and original UKTV productions. In September UKTV Play underwent a full rebrand, with a renewed digital-first brand direction and a fresh look and feel, and towards the end of 2022 the service began to transition content to HD.
W’s move free-to-air on 28 March last year helped propel the channel to 23% share growth year-on-year and UKTV Original commissions accounted for half of W’s top 10 programmes.
Dave continued to have the strongest reach of any non-PSB owned channel, reaching 13.8m adults per month in 2022. Its top performing show was series three of Meet the Richardsons which launched to 792k individuals
Drama continued to retain its position as the number one non-PSB owned channel in the country and in Q3 last year it boasted a 1.65% share, equalling the channel’s best Q3 share ever
