Brookside, The Bay and Unforgotten help STV Player achieve record streaming numbers

Broadcaster STV has hailed its best-ever month for video-on-demand streaming thanks to soap opera Brookside and the success of major drama titles such as The Bay and Unforgotten.

The Glasgow-based group said both crime dramas delivered higher audiences than previous series and were key drivers of growth on the STV Player platform. March saw the streaming platform receive a total of 11.6 million streams from viewers across the UK. The free streaming service’s previous best-ever month was January 2021, when the UK was living through its third national Covid lockdown.

The platform has partly attributed the rise in streaming to its successful relaunch of classic soap Brookside, which it acquired in February. After just one week, the show became the fastest to ever reach one million streams on STV Player, and it has since been streamed more than four million times. In Scotland - where the player’s catalogue also includes STV network content - March’s performance was boosted by the successful return of crime drama titles The Bay and Unforgotten.

Richard Williams, managing director of digital at STV, said: “It’s great that the power of Brookside shows no signs of waning, with the show continuing to perform extremely well and also leading viewers to discover the wealth of fantastic content sitting alongside Brookie on STV Player. The fact that we’ve beaten our previous, lockdown-influenced streaming record - purely based on the huge appeal of gripping shows like Redemption and Unforgotten - proves that STV Player has become many viewers’ go-to destination for free, high-quality TV series from around the world.”