18 November 2014

Multi award-winning media company UKTV has today launched digital brand UKTV Play on PC and YouView.

UKTV Play, which celebrated a successful launch on iOS earlier this year, is an intuitively-designed TV application that gives viewers easy access to their favourite shows from UKTV's popular free-to-air channels, including the UK's most watched non-PSB channel, Dave and popular entertainment channel Really.

Hit shows such as Storage Hunters UK, Crackanory, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, Forbidden History, Inquisition, The Sixties, Crime Stories, Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures, along with a selection of fantastic BBC programmes, will be available to watch on demand.

The service will also include box sets and handpicked collections on PC, so users can enjoy complete series of popular shows such as Dave Gorman Modern Life is Goodish, Ross Noble Freewheeling, Storage Hunters, Lizard Lick Towing, Black Ops, World at War, Raiders of the Lost Art, I Survived Evil, Cold Justice and Ghost Adventures.

UKTV Play makes choosing what to watch easy with cleverly-themed collections of programmes from UKTV's channels to suit the viewers' mood or interest, such as 'Real Crime', 'Wet Weekend' and 'Gadget Geeks' collections. It also includes recommendations straight from the people who know the content best at UKTV headquarters, in a special 'Staff Picks' area.

On YouView, UKTV's popular free-to-air channels will be housed in a dedicated UKTV Play-branded area, where all customers can access a seven day catch-up service for their favourite Dave, Yesterday and Really shows.

The news follows last week's launch of all of UKTV's channels on Virgin On Demand which will be accessible under the UKTV Play brand from December.

Dan Fahy, UKTV's Director, Commercial and Business Development, commented,

We created UKTV Play to give viewers access to UKTV's fantastic content anytime, anywhere via a single on-demand destination. UKTV's viewers really embraced the new UKTV Play app when it launched on iOS in the summer and the launch of UKTV Play on PC and YouView marks the next step in growing UKTV's first fully-digital brand.

David Faulkner, Head of Business Development at YouView said,

It's great to see UKTV further investing in its on demand TV player, which has been popular with YouView customers for well over a year. UKTV Play gives YouView customers access to a wide range of quality on demand TV programmes via our seven day scroll back guide and within the bespoke player, offering a flexible and easy-to-use TV experience for everyone.

Upon launch in July, Apple featured UKTV Play in their 'Best New Apps' section of the App Store, highlighting it amongst the half a million apps available.

UKTV recently announced it had enjoyed a year of record viewing figures and is now 9% of the British commercial broadcasting market. This year, the 10 channel network has achieved great success with its original commissions, including returning series of the hugely popular Dave Gorman Modern Life is Goodish, Crackanory and brand new Storage Hunters UK, which premiered to over a million viewers last month.

UKTV Play is available on PC here: uktvplay.uktv.co.uk

END

For more information, please contact:

Kerry Parker, Head of Network Communications

Lara Feinstein, Corporate Communications Coordinator

About UKTV

UKTV is the multi-award winning media company that reaches over 42 million viewers every month.

UKTV's eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, Watch, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food - include the most popular non-PSB channel in the UK and account for 9% of the British commercial TV market. The company's most recent financial results showed record-breaking year-end revenue of £278m, and EBITDA of £67.4m. It invested a record £125m in programming and related launches last year, and is becoming an increasingly significant investor in UK creativity.

UKTV has a truly innovative model, curating brand-defining commissions, high-profile acquisitions and the very best of BBC, alongside programmes originally shown on ITV and Channel 4. The network embraces technology to deliver inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories.

Now celebrating its 21st year at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. (SNI) - is proud to be the only British television broadcaster to be recognised by Best Companies.

corporate.uktv.co.uk / pressoffice.uktv.co.uk / uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/ / @uktv_press

About YouView

YouView is an on demand TV service with over 70 live free-to-air digital TV and radio channels. It seamlessly combines seven day catch-up on BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5 with a library of on demand television programmes and films.

A range of quality content is available via on demand players from Dave, Yesterday and Really imagined by UKTV, Netflix, Now TV, Sky Store, Quest OD from Discovery, milkshake!, S4C and STV for viewers in Scotland. YouView has record, pause and rewind TV functionality as well as a fully integrated search feature. YouView also offers over 100 extra live TV channels delivered via the set-top box broadband connection.

YouView is offered as part of broadband subscription bundles from TalkTalk and BT. It is also available to buy subscription-free from all major retailers and many independent electrical stores including John Lewis, Currys, Argos, Tesco, Amazon and Richer Sounds.

For more information visit: youview.com, @youview and facebook.com/youview.