Channel 4 will put episodes of Hollyoaks on YouTube a week after they are broadcast on E4 and streamed on its own platform, the channel has announced.
The broadcaster announced last year that the soap, which first aired in 1995 and is aimed at a younger demographic, would take a streaming-first approach. It has now said that from 25 September, Hollyoaks will be available to watch on Channel 4’s website the day before airing on the E4 channel.
Screenings on Channel 4 will no longer air the following day and instead there will be a weekly omnibus on the terrestrial station. Episodes will also be available on YouTube a week after its streaming and the E4 broadcast.
Channel 4’s chief content officer, Ian Katz, said: “Hollyoaks has always been the youngest and most innovative soap so it’s fitting that it should be the first to embrace the changes in the behaviour of younger viewers and switch to a genuinely digital-led release pattern.
“It was the first UK soap to move to a stream-first model last year and this is the next phase of that evolution. We hope making Hollyoaks available on YouTube, as well as our own platforms, will introduce a whole new generation to the show.”
Previously, Channel 4’s on-demand service had the episodes uploaded in the morning before later screenings on E4. The new schedule pattern will be commemorated with a one-hour special, which focuses on a love triangle and “murder twists and turns”.
In the soap, Felix Westwood (Richard Blackwood), his girlfriend Mercedes McQueen (Jennifer Metcalfe) and best friend Warren Fox (Jamie Lomas) reach an “explosive turning point”, the broadcaster said. A secret about the influencer Rayne Royce (Jemma Donovan) will also be revealed.
In 2022, Hollyoaks became the first UK soap to premiere its episodes on a streaming service before the live television broadcast.
In July, the Guardian reported that Channel 4 decommissioned or paused a number of shows because of a slump in advertising, which it relies on to generate money to commission shows.
The casualties have included a reboot of the reality series Four Weddings and Andrew Neil’s Sunday night political show, which will not be returning this year. Neil and Channel 4 have yet to decide if it will return next year.
It has held off on other programmes, such as a planned daytime series based on Kirstie Allsopp’s one-off festive special Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas.
Executives at Channel 4, which was saved from privatisation in January, had deferred taking bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to help combat its financial constraints.
