Love Island hit by crisis as viewing figures for new series revealed
LOVE Island scraped in just over a million viewers for the second episode of its much-hyped summer season — in a huge blow for the show.
The ITV2 dating series has failed to capture hearts, losing 28 per cent of its audience overnight after turning in a lacklustre performance for Monday’s launch.
Some 1,111,000 viewers watched Tuesday’s episode live, down almost half on last year’s second episode figure of 2,214,500.
It comes after the series ten premiere — hosted by Maya Jama following her Winter Love Island debut — drew in a peak of 1,543,000 viewers.
That was some one million down on 2022.
It is a far cry from the show’s heyday of 2019, when the launch drew in 3.3million fans.
ITV says a large proportion of Love Island’s audience now watches the programme on digital devices and via catch-up.
So far, an extra 300,000 have been added to the launch figure.
Despite the show seeing a slide in its audience since 2019, the channel’s entertainment boss Kevin Lygo said the figures do not tell the whole story.
He told the Edinburgh TV festival: “This is a pattern you see when new programmes come along and they’re huge phenomenons. On catch up, it’s the best performing series ever.
“Who would think you could invent a programme that runs every night at 9pm for eight weeks and keep viewers, especially young viewers who are hard to find now?”
In another speech, he added: “Love Island goes against what people say in that ‘young people don’t watch television’.”
ITV says its streaming platform, ITVX had its best day since March on Monday, largely due to Love Island.
The episode is the third most-watched show of the year with the 16-34 age group.
It comes as bosses try to ignite viewer interest by sending in a hot new bombshell.
Fiery Whitney Adebayo, 25, from London, says she has “triple B’s — bum, boobs and brains”.
Islanders Molly Marsh and Mitchel Taylor have already shared a number of steamy snogs.
And The Sun has also revealed two of the line-up — George Fensom and Mitch — are already under fire from fans online after being accused of toxic behaviour by former partners.