Drama drops give ITV best-ever start
MAY 20, 2022 11.05 EUROPE/LONDON BY JULIAN CLOVER

ITV’s digital first strategy has helped the broadcaster to its best-ever start to the year for drama viewing online.

124 million streams were clocked up in the four months to the end of April, up 8% year on year. The broadcaster is in the process of transitioning its ITV Hub online platform into ITVX.

The majority of ITV drama is already released as a full series immediately after the initial broadcast of the first episode.

Recently published 28-day consolidated data for The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe – combining linear and online viewing – shows that the total audience for the first episode rose by a massive 5.4 million viewers in the 28 days after the initial broadcast, with the four-part series as a whole averaging a total audience of over 9 million viewers, up by 5.1 million/123% on the broadcast transmission.

The series tells the true-life story of a Hartlepool couple and a now infamous insurance scam.

Trigger Point (Pictured), ITV’s biggest drama so far in 2022 averaged a total audience of 9.5 million viewers; Our House averaged a total audience of 7.4 million viewers and No Return, which averaged a total audience of 6.5 million viewers.