Britain’s biggest multichannel broadcaster, UKTV, today launches a new player on the YouView platform for its fast-growing TV on demand service UKTV Play.
From today, YouView viewers will have access to the significantly-updated UKTV Play service, which offers a huge selection of TV shows from UKTV’s Dave, Really, Yesterday and Drama channels.
Designed to make viewers’ experience more enjoyable and personalised, the reimagined VOD player features a smart new home screen with tailored recommendations and top shows from across the four channels. Collections bring together specially curated themes, and viewers can also collate their favourite episodes to watch later. The all-new predictive search makes finding a programme or collection extra easy.
UKTV’s Head of Digital Products, Oliver Davies, said, “We’re really pleased to bring our new UKTV Play experience to YouView. As with our web, mobile and other set top box apps, viewers now have at-a-glance access to programmes across all the channels, with both hand-picked favourites and personalised recommendations based on what viewers have watched. We hope the new ways of discovering programmes such as predictive search, channel filtering, bookmarking and A-Z list, together with the improved responsiveness, will make the service even more of a pleasure to use.”
This update, which follows YouView’s reengineering and redesign of the entire platform known as Next Generation YouView, is the latest in a line of carefully-designed product redesigns from UKTV Play, all based on user research data and A/B testing. Since the new app for mobile devices launched in February, views have increased by 38%*. When the broadcaster revealed a new UKTVplay.co.uk desktop site last year it contributed to a sharp, 50% increase in views.
UKTV Play continues to grow year-on-year. Last week the service had its best seven-day period ever, with total views up 56% vs the year average**, helped by new content including UKTV Originals Taskmaster, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled and Drama’s The Brokenwood Mysteries.
The service boasts a vast and diverse catalogue of quality shows, including exclusive UKTVOriginals such as Red Dwarf XI and Dara O Briain’s Go 8 Bit. UKTV Originals perform particularly well on the service, with the network seeing 179% growth in direct-to-consumer streams of originals in 2016 compared to 2015.
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*38% increase in views during the 24-day period post-update (12th Feb – 7 March) vs. the 24-day period pre-update (19th Jan – 11th Feb).
** 56% increase in views for 6-12th March, vs the 52 week average (Wk10 2016 – Wk09 2017)
