Virgin Media Television (VMTV) would be “happy” to repeat its “very, very encouraging” 2022 performance this year amid intensifying competition for audiences and revenues, managing director Paul Farrell said on Wednesday.
Speaking after the broadcaster’s spring launch event, Mr Farrell said Virgin had grown its share of the 15- to 44-year-old audience – a market that is declining overall – while Virgin Media Player streams reached a record high of almost 46 million, up about one million on 2021.
“It was a year fraught with uncertainty and short-termism, but as it progressed, it became more positive,” he said, with linear channels having “a very solid year” and the company, a subsidiary of Liberty Global telco Virgin Media Ireland, achieving “good revenue growth” in digital.
Linear advertising revenue was “slightly down” on 2021 levels, but was higher than it was in the pre-pandemic benchmark year of 2019.
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“If I could take last year’s performance this year, I’d be happy,” Mr Farrell said.
VMTV has no immediate plans to hire an executive to replace its former director of content, Bill Malone, who left the Ballymount-based broadcaster in December 2022 after six years. There will instead be an internal succession plan involving “some really good people who have learned from Bill”.
The biggest hitter on its spring schedule will be the Six Nations, rights to which it shares with RTÉ. As Virgin had three of the five Ireland games in the men’s rugby championship in 2022, it will have two this year. This will, however, include Ireland v England “in what will hopefully be a decider” at the Aviva Stadium on March 18th.
In 2022, France v Ireland was Virgin’s most-watched programme, with Ireland v Scotland in second position and Ireland v Italy in sixth, underlying the importance of the Six Nations to the company.
Mr Farrell said the women’s Six Nations and the men’s under-20s competition, both of which are part of the same rights deal, had “performed really well” for Virgin last year and would likely do “good numbers” again in 2023.
Love Island, the online ratings juggernaut, begins its winter run next Monday with new host Maya Jama. The summer edition was responsible for 15 million of Virgin’s streams in 2022.
Irish dramas due to be shown later this year, meanwhile, include missing persons chiller The Vanishing Triangle, which stars India Mullen and Allen Leech, and Baz Ashmawy’s culture-clash comedy Faithless. Both shows were previously announced, as were titles such as factual series How to Buy a Home and The Clinic for Well People.
Mr Farrell said it was important to facilitate “challenging” and “mature” conversations on shows such as Eating with the Enemy to help counter perceptions that Irish people are becoming less tolerant of others who hold different opinions to theirs.
“When you have people saying ‘oh, I’m going to be cancelled’, that just scares the living daylights out of me.”
The “foundation” of the daily Virgin Media One line-up is the live studio programming it produces through from Ireland AM to the Tonight Show, he added, signalling that his ambition is for these programmes to “get out of Dublin more”.
