UKTV REVEAL GROWTH ACROSS CHANNELS DURING 2020
Red Dwarf: The Promised Land (Dave), Meet the Richardsons (Dave), Ricky & Ralf's Very Northern Road Trip (Gold), Bangers & Cash (Yesterday) and Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years (Dave) were the highest rating shows on the network with Red Dwarf: The Promised Land becoming Dave's most watched show in seven years (2.02 million, total consumption).
On Dave, which achieved its best SOCI performance since 2016, the success of Red Dwarf: The Promised Land was followed by Meet the Richardsons, which was watched by 1.13 million, making it the strongest launch of a brand-new original series on Dave in five years.
The evolution of crime drama channel Alibi also paid dividends with new scripted drama We Hunt Together becoming the highest rating show on the channel in 2020, watched by 602k.
Gold proved a hit during the turbulence of last year as viewers sought out nostalgia and comforting family favourites, resulting in the channel's best Q2 SOCI performance since 2011. However, it was once again UKTV Originals that topped the ratings chart. Ricky & Ralf's Very Northern Road Trip was the best performing title on Gold and achieved the accolade of being the biggest ever non-scripted title on the channel watched by 818k.
On W, Emma Willis: Delivering Babies picked up its second consecutive Broadcast Digital Award for Best Popular Factual. The channel also grew SOCI and saw strong performances from Masterchef Australia and Inside the Ambulance.
UKTV's CEO, Marcus Arthur, said: "At the start of last year no one could have predicted what was in store. The global pandemic turned life upside down and businesses were forced to quickly adapt and pivot to new ways of working. I'm incredibly proud of how the team came together during our first full year under BBC Studios ownership and embraced UKTV's unique challenger spirit to drive the business forward. While the pandemic temporarily paused production, UKTV was uniquely positioned with an incredibly rich archive of content which has been a much-appreciated source of joy for our viewers. This, alongside our strong pipeline of Originals, helped to deliver growth across all metrics in 2020."
"We will continue to build on this momentum throughout 2021 by increasing investment in original programming, strengthening our partnerships with the production community, and by growing our video on demand service, UKTV Play. We also look forward to outlining our growth strategy for key areas of podcasts and digital content."