ITV reports festive growth

ITV has reported a modest increase in usage of its ITV Hub catch up service.

The UK pubcaster said that its VOD service saw a year-over-year increase of 11% for the festive period of December 21-January 3, with an overall increase of 5% year-over-year for December. The month saw a total of 81 million programme streams.

The most-watched show was Coronation Stream, which charted 6.9 million streams over Christmas. The Christmas day episode was the highest performing individual episode with 1 million streams, while the episode was watched by an audience of 6.7 million across all broadcast and online platforms.

The return of hit game show The Masked Singer proved to be another strong performer with 500,000 streams, while The Real Housewives of Cheshire reached 400,000 streams. Other entertainment programmes including The Cabins have also performed well.

Factual entertainment shows saw similarly strong performance, with The Three Unwise Men and The Story of SM:TV Live resonating with viewers.

Streaming of daytime TV, a historically strong performer for ITV, was dominated by Good Morning Britain, which became the biggest daytime show on the platform and the fourth most popular programme overall. The show was streamed for 1.8 million hours in December, up 46% year-over-year. This Morning, Lorraine and Loose Women also saw marked growth, with the former two shows recording year-over-year growth of 103% and 91% respectively.

Rufus Radcliffe, managing director, ITV On Demand said: “The ITV Hub enjoyed a successful Christmas period, with excellent figures across all programme genres. It’s great to see such positive engagement in our catch up and simulcast services on the Hub which demonstrate that, while viewer habits may be changing, the demand for ITV’s content remains as strong as ever.”

The announcement comes as ITV Hub has agreed a deal with DRM provider Vualto for content protection on the platform. The deal will enable ITV to broadcast more of its existing sports rights digitally and easily launch pop-up channels for specific events.

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