Unpacking Channel 4’s Record Streaming Figures

Streaming and Content Chief Kiran Nataraja reveals how the PSB achieved its highest-ever single day and whole month viewing numbers

Channel 4 has broken a hat trick of streaming records on its VoD platform in quick succession: last week it topped its single-day viewing record, set just a week earlier, and September was its most-watched month ever.  

According to O&O analysis provided by C4, its streaming platform averages 5 million views per day, and Barb data from the PSB shows on 30 September it accumulated 6.9 million views, a figure it smashed a week later on 7 October when it hit 7.7 million views.  

Meanwhile, Barb data provided by C4 shows C4’s streaming viewer minutes grew 36% year-on-year in September, which the broadcaster says puts it ahead of all leading streamers, including the BBC, ITV, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Sky and 5.  

Importantly for the youth-skewing broadcaster, young people now watch 52% of their C4 viewing through streaming, which C4 says is a greater proportion than any other commercial broadcaster. Stalwarts such as Bake Off (Love Productions), Taskmaster (Avalon), Married at First Sight UK (CPL) and the return of Educating Yorkshire (Twofour) amassed a combined 599 million viewer minutes from this cohort in September, resulting in the four shows sitting in the top seven most-watched programmes on commercial streamers among 16-34s.  

Kiran Nataraja, Director of Streaming and Content Strategy, takes heart from these stats –as she sees it, they underscore the PSB’s ambition to become the world’s first public service streamer.   

“This year we’re seeing a real tipping point for young audiences,” she tells Broadcast.  

“For the first time, 52% of our total viewing for 16-34 audiences now sits on streaming, whereas last year it was 40%, so what we’re seeing is that while younger viewers are still coming to our big, broad shows on linear, they’re now consuming them more on streaming, which is a really positive story, given our strategy to move towards being a digital first public service streamer.” 

She cites Educating Yorkshire and Virgin Island (Double Act Productions) as examples of programmes that may have had “modest” overnight performances, with 770,000 (6.5%) and 392,000 (3.6%) respectively, but consolidated linear audiences and streaming performances proved them to be hits. Educating Yorkshire won its linear slot among 16-34s five weeks in a row on consolidated figures and its streaming numbers added “just shy” of 900,000 viewers per episode.  

According to C4 data released in June, Virgin Island was its most successful unscripted launch since records began, with the first episode drawing a consolidated 28-day audience of 2 million, 814,000 of which were made up of 16-34s. Its 16-34 share after seven days was 33.5% and the full series had accumulated 10.7 million views on streaming so far. 

“I think that we can attract big audience figures for 16- 34s, they’re just consuming content in a different way – on streaming,” she says.  

‘Long tail’ of streaming 

While the majority of C4’s catch-up happens in the first seven days, some titles, such as the second series of The Jury: Murder Trial (ScreenDog Productions), achieve a “a good level of catch-up, just on a slightly longer timeframe”, Nataraja says. 

Does this longer tail affect what shows get recommissioned? 

“Our measurement of success is that 0-28 day combined linear and streaming figure -that’s a number that we look at as our first benchmark when we’re looking at recommissioning decisions,” Nataraja says.  

“But we look at demographics, overnights – we cut the data in a number of ways. What we are looking at is the life cycle of a show on Channel 4 streaming.  We will have some titles that will potentially burn very brightly but then may not have a longer tail on streaming, but there are some genres like comedy, and drama to an extent, where people will continue to catch up with them.” 

YouTube strategy 

In recent years, C4 has been making full episodes of its programmes available on its YouTube channels, including Married At First Sight UK, the celebrity and junior editions of Bake Off and latest competition series Worlds Apart.   

This is a strategy clearly paying off as C4 reports YouTube growth in long-form views have grown 55% year-on-year so far in 2025. Its main YouTube channel saw higher average views per video in the first half of this year at 72,0000, compared to ITV (39,000) and Sky TV (25,000), according to data supplied by C4.  

Nataraja dismisses any notion that this strategy is cannibalising C4’s streaming service, stating that audiences on YouTube remain there.  

“There is a certain number of viewers who will only consume content on YouTube, and it would be remiss of us to think we could move them over to our streaming platform,” she explains.  

“It’s about learning what are the content types that work well on YouTube and how audiences are consuming content on it? For example, we’ve noticed that viewers tend to boxset less on YouTube.” 

She adds: “We want our YouTube piece to feel really complementary and additive to our overall content strategy.” 

Educating Yorkshire

The success of the PSB’s audience growth on YouTube can also be attributed to Channel 4.0, the dedicated youth entertainment brand, she says. She points out how several years ago C4 took native digital talent, such as Amelia Dimoldenberg, and tried to plug them into traditional linear programmes. 

“That didn’t work because the audience wasn’t there,” she states.  

“C4.0 uses YouTube talent on our bespoke YouTube channel, and doesn’t feel ‘dad at the disco’. You’re serving audiences where they are, but you’re also building that next generation of brand recognition because it’s a crowded market and we want people to understand what C4 is about.” 

Digital transformation journey 

Last week C4 and UKTV announced a partnership that will see the former make the latter’s VoD service U available on its own streaming platform. This is indicative of C4’s streaming ambitions, says Nataraja.   

“It will be a really interesting challenge for my team in terms of complementary planning and showcasing UKTV’s content on C4 streaming and there’s lots to be learned about audience behaviours, UKTV’s audience is obviously much older than ours,” she notes.  

As her team focuses on homepage curation, release patterns, and keeping viewers on the streaming service with related content through its ‘watch next’ strategy, Nataraja emphasises that linear remains important to her plans.  

“One of the biggest challenges I face is getting that balance right between linear and streaming. Streaming is our North Star and now we’ve got an additional layer of social media and YouTube,” she says.  

“It feels like we’ve got the balance right in terms of that juggling act: ensuring we’ve got linear scale, being alive to the fact big, returning brands and new titles are ensuring that, not only are we maintaining linear scale, we’re also a destination on streaming, particularly for younger viewers.” 

By Marian McHugh. 

Originally posted on Broadcast.