Karl Pilkington series sets On Demand viewing records
November 7, 2013
By Colin Mann
BSkyB has revealed that its Sky 1 travelogue programme The Moaning of Life, featuring television personality Karl Pilkington has become the biggest home-grown show on Sky 1 so far this year, as well as generating record On Demand and Sky Go viewing figures.
Writing in the Sky Views blog, Stuart Murphy, Director, Entertainment Channels, notes that it is not just in terms of customers who are watching the programme live as it premières on Sunday evenings – or even those who are recording it and watching it back through Sky+. “We’re also seeing a huge response to our new innovations like Sky On Demand and Sky Go. It’s really great that our customers are using our innovations to watch our shows on their terms,” he says.
Murphy reports that looking at total viewing during the seven days following the series première, more than 2.5 million people watched the first episode via the linear schedule (in other words, either live or as a Sky+ recording). On top of this, the show also smashed On Demand and Sky Go viewing records. The show was downloaded more 100,000 times via Sky’s On Demand service and there were also just under 100,000 views through Sky Go, via laptop, mobile or tablet devices.
“Uniquely, our On Demand preview service gives Sky customers the exclusive chance to enjoy the opening episodes of many of our biggest and most hotly anticipated shows before they’ve even been on air.” he writes. “Just in the last few months alone, Sky customers have been able to enjoy a long list of home-grown and US series, including Chickens and Mad Dogs (Sky 1 HD), The Tunnel and Ray Donovan (Sky Atlantic HD) and Hannibal and Elementary (Sky Living HD). Our customers can either download the shows to their Sky+HD set-top box to watch when they want, or stream on demand via Sky Go, to watch our shows at least a week before anyone else.”
Murphy says that with The Moaning of Life having set new records, it’s great to see Sky’s customers using its preview service to enjoy a sneak peak of its shows. “The good news is that we’re working on making yet more of our shows available in this way so Sky customers can continue to see some of our biggest and best series before anyone else.”
The success of the new show also follows Murphy’s blog from last week which revealed that a record eight out of the ten most popular entertainment shows on Sky during September were original Sky commissions. “It goes to show that our customers love original, home-grown programmes alongside all the other great content that Sky offers. And that’s why we’ve committed to doing even more of it,” he confirms.