UKTV CEO Darren Childs tells TV Europe about what has been driving the television company\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
TV EUROPE: <\/strong>What has been driving UKTV\u2019s growth? TV EUROPE: <\/strong>When viewers tune in to UKTV or watch online, what can they expect? Shows that are worth mentioning include Hoff the Record<\/em>, a spoof documentary starring David Hasselhoff on Dave, and the scripted comedy Undercover<\/em>, also on Dave. We recently announced two big drama pieces for Gold: Marley\u2019s Ghosts<\/em> and Singing in the Rainforest<\/em>. As for returning series, we\u2019ve got a big hit with our version of Storage Hunters<\/em>. We acquired the U.S. show and made a U.K. version, and it\u2019s become a big hit for us. We are also working with some of the best off-screen and on-screen talent, people like Dave Gorman, Alan Davies and David Hasselhoff. So it\u2019s lots of things, not just one specific thing, but all those things have amounted to huge amounts of viewership.<\/p>\n TV EUROPE: <\/strong>How important are recognizable brands in today\u2019s media landscape? I imagine you match shows to fit the brand message of each channel. What we\u2019ve also done is reintroduce the UKTV brand in the digital space, because that is even more fragmented than the multichannel space and much more crowded because the barriers to entry are significantly lower. So we\u2019ve reintroduced the UKTV brand on our VOD service, UKTV Play. We look at it as our 11th\u00a0channel. It\u2019s not just about a long-tail service, it\u2019s highly editorialized, a very consumer-focused video-on-demand service, which is on most platforms in the U.K. UKTV Play pulls in the best of our channel brands and content from across the portfolio. Because people\u2019s moods and tastes change\u2014nobody wants to watch comedy all night every single night of their lives\u2014it means that as we build our reputation we can make recommendations to viewers and move them to different parts of the portfolio, so they can discover new content that they wouldn\u2019t normally come to as part of the UKTV channel service. UKTV Play is proving really, really successful and we\u2019re seeing huge increases in our video-on-demand streams. In fact, all on-demand views across the network grew by 348 percent last year compared to 2013.<\/p>\n TV EUROPE: <\/strong>Are you seeing any trends as to what types of shows people are watching on linear versus digital? TV EUROPE: <\/strong>Are you following a particular strategy with your new commissions, whether they be comedy or drama? TV EUROPE: <\/strong>How do acquired shows fit into the mix? TV EUROPE: <\/strong>UKTV\u2019s advertising revenues have been strong. Are you working with advertisers to help them find their target audience or shape their messages in special ways? What also is worth commenting on is that in the U.K. we are seeing significant real growth in the overall size of the TV market. If you remember the 2009 global recession, the ad market took a bit of a dip and it\u2019s been slowly recovering to its pre-2009 level. But in 2014 and already in 2015 we are seeing for the first time in ten years a real increase in the amount of money advertisers are spending on television\u2014and what I mean by that is both linear and nonlinear as well. It was 5-percent growth last year and about the same amount in 2015, so the advertisers in the U.K. are still very confident that linear and nonlinear television is still the best and most efficient way to get product out to their consumers.<\/p>\n TV EUROPE: <\/strong>What opportunities for growth do you see for UKTV? We are actively investing in our digital products suite, UKTV Play, making sure we are at the forefront of the change in consumption patterns. We\u2019re not being led by it but we are actually at the forefront of it all, so we are investing heavily in our video-on-demand services on the UKTV Play brand. That service is on many of the pay-TV platforms, iOS and Android. And then the third part is investing more in content so that as we see that shift in power from platforms to content owners, we are at the forefront of that. We are big believers that content drives this business and that\u2019s our area of expertise and we will continue to invest heavily in order to earn a greater share of that market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UKTV CEO Darren Childs tells TV Europe about what has been driving the television company\u2019s growth. TV EUROPE: What has been driving UKTV\u2019s growth? CHILDS: It\u2019s been driven by the audience. One of the things we track and monitor is our share of commercial viewing\u2014comparing ourselves to our commercial counterparts in the free-to-air as well …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[101,81],"class_list":["post-6102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-darren-childs","tag-uktv"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>It\u2019s been driven by the audience. One of the things we track and monitor is our share of commercial viewing\u2014comparing ourselves to our commercial counterparts in the free-to-air as well as the multichannel space. A lot of our competitors\u2019 shares are flat or down, and UKTV is delivering significant year-on-year growth. It did that in 2014, in 2013 as well, and it also grew in 2012. And we started 2015 with another growth spurt, which actually catapulted us to 9.4 percent of all commercial television viewing in the U.K. market, so it\u2019s been a great growth story. What\u2019s been very rewarding for us as a team is that as we have taken a huge amount of creative risk with the content that we have commissioned and the shows that we have bought. We have been so well rewarded by more and more people spending more and more time with us, and that has increased our viewing share.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>I think their expectations have changed. It\u2019s interesting that in the U.K. some commentators think of UKTV as being a repeat-based business because that is how it was established years ago. But at the consumer level it\u2019s perceived now as a real confident originator of great content that has a different tone and feel from some of the programs they normally see on some of the bigger channels. We are constantly trying to surprise our audience. We\u2019re always trying to look for that piece of content that we think will be well received and that differentiates us from our competitors. If you look at our current slate of original content and returning original content, we\u2019re in a much better place than we ever were in the company\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>It\u2019s been a very deliberate strategy on UKTV\u2019s part to have highly individual brands that stand on their own two feet. The way that we branded our channels is very different from\u00a0any others in the world. We were the first to really take risks with Dave and we continued that with channels like Watch and Really and others in the portfolio. We\u2019re big believers in having an incredibly strong and evocative brand, but it has to be supported by an incredible content lineup. If you don\u2019t have both working in parallel then you are never going to deliver the growth that you need.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>From a consumer perspective this is a fantastic development. In any television business there has always been, \u201cI\u2019ll watch this if there\u2019s nothing else on.\u201d I think that mindset of nothing else on doesn\u2019t exist anymore, because if there isn\u2019t anything on the linear channels then there are so many options for people to go to and find great quality on UKTV Play and other video-on-demand services. The general comment I would make is that the introduction of video on demand is increasing the overall quality of the content we, as an industry, have to create, because that second tier and third tier is struggling to find an audience. I think it\u2019s going to continue to struggle, and that is why we are investing more money each year in original content of the highest quality so it works for us on our linear channels and it also works in our nonlinear services, because we are seeing audiences really select quality content.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>Unlike many of our free-to-air terrestrial and public service competitors, we don\u2019t commission [for a specific] slot. We will only make content that we feel hugely passionate about and that we feel is content that needs to be made and the fans of our channels and our brands will love us for. So we don\u2019t just commission to slot like many broadcasters around the world. We\u2019re always looking for that show which is slightly different, pushing the boundaries a little bit, and telling stories in a better way, in a different way. We genuinely understand our end consumer and we commission with them in mind all the time. We do have a good perception of what we think will work. I think that bears out in our hit rate; we have an incredibly high hit rate in terms of the shows we commission delivering massive audiences.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>They are very important to us; we\u2019ve had a huge amount of success with a number of acquisitions. We have some great long-running returning shows including Suits<\/em>, Rizzoli & Isles<\/em>, Castle<\/em>, Grimm<\/em>. Our audiences really like those shows. We\u2019ve also got Crossing Lines<\/em>. We think there is a big audience for Parks and Recreation<\/em> and it will do fantastically well on Dave, it\u2019s very much on brand. Acquired shows are key components of our schedule and also complement what we get from the BBC and everyone else we acquire U.K. content from. Again, we look at it very much from a consumer perspective backwards and acquired shows complement the schedule. They are not replicas of things we are making. As I mentioned, we\u2019ve also had big success in acquiring shows and then making a U.K. version; Storage Hunters<\/em> has been a very successful franchise. We\u2019ve also just picked up the new January Jones show, The Last Man on Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>We\u2019ve been pioneers in that space. We were one of the first broadcasters to move into ad-funded programming. We did a number of big shows. We\u2019ve got a phenomenal relationship with Red Bull and make a number of shows together with them. We\u2019ve done some really innovative factual-entertainment shows with sponsors. When opportunities arise and we think it\u2019s a great piece of content, we will continue to develop [ad-funded programming]. What we\u2019re unlikely to do is just make content to order based on trying to sell products. We are a consumer-led business and a brand-led business and we protect that.<\/p>\n
\nCHILDS: <\/strong>There is still significant growth in the linear market. We are aggressively investing in content in order to grow our share of viewing because we believe that there is still a lot of headroom for us in a market where the ad market is growing.<\/p>\n