STV Productions hit by lack of drama

As part of its 2014 financial results, the broadcaster revealed its production arm generated £13.3m over the period, down on the £16.8m predicted, despite producing 23 hours more content than in 2013.

STV chief executive Rob Woodward admitted that the division, led by Alan Clements, had failed to make the inroads into drama expected.  

However he pointed to the appointment of former BBC producer Sarah Brown as its head of drama last autumn as positioning it well to secure “returnable” drama commissions next year.  

STVP has previously produced ITV two-part series The Poison Tree, long-running detective drama Rebus and film Fast Freddie, The Widow and Me.

“Our ambition is to use our strong pedigree as a drama producer and return to that genre,” said Woodward. “We’ve got a good pipeline, but realistically drama commissions take many months to get away so we’re working away on a number of fronts.”

Woodward added that the drama push would not distract it from the gains made in daytime and entertainment. Over the past 12 months, STV has secured a third series of ITV’s Catchphrase and a tenth run of Antiques Road Trip for BBC1.

Despite the growth in volume of content produced to 164 hours, STVP’s revenues remained marginally down on the £13.6m generated in 2013. Woodward attributed the dip to the growth in daytime hours on its slate.

STV diversity

The results also highlighted advertising accounted for 89% of STV’s £120m total revenue - up 1% year-on-year.

Woodward said he planned to diversify the business and is aiming to generate a third of 2015 profits from non-broadcast activity, up from its current level of 21%. He pointed to STV’s digital business, in which revenues surged by 23% year-on-year to £5.3m.

At the heart of its proposition is STV Player, which generated 14m long-form views from 3.6m users per month in 2014.

The chief executive said the VoD service would be supercharged later this year following the introduction of mandatory registration in 2014. Over 1m users have created accounts.  

The player will now be developed to enable users to pause a programme on one device before continuing to watch from the same point on a different device.

Woodward added that he wanted to emulate Channel 4’s strategy by offering personalised services for registered users, while monetising the service further by offering brands hyper-targeted advertising.

Local STV

STV followed its January launch of STV Glasgow with the unveiling of STV Edinburgh in June.

Woodward said he expected the Glaswegian station to break even this year with its sister starting to turn a profit in 2015. The broadcaster is also the only bidder for three further licences: Aberdeen, Ayr and Dundee.

“Our city broadcast services reached 1m people across two channels last month over a total catchment area of 3m,” said Woodward. “For a channel that just launched that’s a strong and satisfactory performance.”