UKTV and their network of 10 channels delivered a 9.37% share of commercial impacts in April 2014, up from 7.44% in April 2013.
The growth stands in in stark contrast to the 3% decline suffered by the rest of the market and, UKTV noted, represents the company’s “greatest ever monthly year-on-year SOCI growth”. The growth was driven by the strong performance of UKTV’s Pay TV channels, with Alibi up 25%, Gold up 3%, Watch up 11%, Really up 32% and Drama delivering a SOCI of 1.39% – making April 2014 its best month since launch.
Acquisitions proved to be key to UKTV’s success in April 2014. Watch’s Grimm peaked at 691K viewers, up some 231% on the slot average; fellow Watch acquisition Believe scored 588K, up 208% on the slot average; and Alibi’s Castle peaked at 521K viewers, up 91% on the slot average. Other top performing series included Dave’s Storage Hunters (579K) and Really’s Ghost Adventures (251K).
Also of note is the strong performance of UKTV’s VOD platform, which the company has been rolling out over the past two years. UKTV said that their VOD services had achieved record breaking growth with total views up 586% year-on-year.
