Love Island launches with smallest audience since 2016 in blow to ITV - but still trounces latest All Star series

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Love Island has launched with its smallest audience since 2016 in a blow to ITV - but is still trouncing the ratings of the last All Star series.
The ITV2 dating show returned to our screens on Monday night, with presenter Maya Jama welcoming 12 new Islanders to the villa in Mallorca to find love.
The launch episode pulled in 1.4million viewers across all devices - up on the launch of the All Stars spin-off featuring former contestants in January.
This makes it the channel's biggest show of the year.
But despite this, the viewing figures for this year's series - the tenth anniversary instalment of the show - are a far cry from the ratings the programme used to enjoy.
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The second ever series of Love Island, in 2016, pulled in just 825,000 terrestrial viewers for its launch episode, at 9pm on a Monday in May, Broadcast Now reports.
But while this year's opening episode pulled in 1.4million across all devices, it only attracted 1.2million terrestrial viewers at its peak.
This terrestrial figure is well above both the numbers for 2016 and the slot average, of 357,000 people.
And it easily beats the second series of Love Island: All Stars earlier this year, which reached 760,000 terrestrial viewers during its launch on a Monday in January.
But it still falls considerably short of the kinds of terrestrial ratings launch episodes have tended to enjoy in recent years.
The opening episode in 2023 attracted 1.3million of these kinds of viewers - while last year's launch boasted a whopping 1.6million people tuning in on TV.
Though the 2024 launch did inconveniently clash with a friendly match between England and Bosnia & Herzegovina on Channel 4, it was simulcast on ITV1 and ITV2.
The decline in the show's terrestrial ratings could well be explained by more audiences turning to streaming as time goes on.
Monday's launch was, however, a win for the broadcaster in terms of attracting younger audiences.
The opening episode pulled in the biggest 16-to-34-year-old audience of all programmes across ITV's channels that day, with 364,000 people of those ages tuning in.
Since its launch in 2015, Love Island has been streamed a whopping 2billion times to date on ITVX.
Despite only two episodes of this year's series of the programme having aired so far, viewers already have strong feeling about the latest batch of Islanders.
Fans slammed 'nasty mean girls' among the women in the cast as they 'alienated' single Shakira Khan for flirting with the boys during last night's episode.
ITV2 viewers were left shocked by the 'b****y' girls' behaviour as they chatted around the fire pit - excluding Shakira and American bombshell Toni.
The girls complained: 'Shakira has spoken to every Tom Dick and Harry. I don't think I've done enough.'
Megan said: 'Shakira has been grafting her f***ing a*** off today.'
Helena added: 'I think she fancies everyone, doesn't she? She even fancies the plants. I should have grafted today, I should have kissed him.'
Shakira picked up on the 'bad vibes' and told Toni she felt 'singled out' but pointed out there was nothing stopping the other girls grafting too.
She said: 'Getting ready then, the vibes were so off and I can't say anything as nothing has really been said but the energy, everyone's thinking like, "Have they done enough?"
'The girls don't appreciate that I'm grafting. We have all been here a day, like, you can do it too.
'It has rubbed people up the wrong way and I've been singled out as the threat. You get in as much as you get out.'
Fans rushed to X to call out the girls for 'alienating' Shakira, questioning if they had ever watched the show - on which 'grafting' is normal.
They wrote: 'The twist that has made Shakira have to graft has made the other girls alienate her which is so nasty. This is LOVE Island, you can all graft too! Nobody wants to work anymore!;
'What's this shade towards Shakira? "She's spoken to every Tom, Dick and Harry". DUHHHHH This is Love Island;
'Ew these blondes getting b****y about Shakira getting to know the boys, LIKE WHAT LOVE ISLAND IS FOR.'
Love Island is available to watch on ITV2 and to stream on ITVX.