UK commercial broadcaster UKTV says that its streaming platform UKTV Play grew direct-to-consumer views by over a quarter and added a further one million registered users in 2022. At the same time, a stronger focus on the platform’s social strategy generated a significant audience uplift for UKTV comedy channel Dave.
Commenting on the company’s buoyant results UKTV CEO Marcus Arthur said: “Despite the economic downturn in the latter half of 2022, UKTV has continued to grow its share of the commercial TV market (SOCI) to record levels while continuing to invest in services and programming. We’ve also made great strides in our digital content strategy, producing more original short-form content to drive views to our Dave YouTube channel, and achieving over one million downloads to our suite of podcasts.”
UKTV said social AVOD was “a key priority for UKTV’s digital strategy in 2022, to boost engagement with younger audiences”. Highlighting the company’s strategy for Dave, the company said the Dave YouTube channel generated 12m views, up 42% year-on-year, and scored over one million hours of watch time. Commissioned short-form content such as comedy format Get Off My Phone!, Outsiders: Gone Wild, Backstage Hypotheticals and Question Team: Interrogations drove views.
Across all social platforms UKTV feeds saw an average of 25m impressions per month and enjoyed a 11% increase in followers, driven by Dave’s TikTok followers which were up 52% year on year. Across the year, UKTV achieved over one million podcast downloads driven by three original podcasts for Dave and companion podcasts for two established shows. These included Hard Sell hosted by Darren Harriott and Josh Jones; Jordan Brookes: Look At What You’ve Done; Dave’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards podcast miniseries; Late Night Mash: The Podcast (Yes We’ve Got One Too) hosted by Geoff Norcott and Olga Koch and Hypothetical: The Podcast.
