Love Island takes a hit after tragedy
LOVE Island viewing figures dropped significantly in the immediate aftermath of the news of the tragic death of the reality show’s host Caroline Flack, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Virgin Media broadcast Love Island to a reality-show-hungry Irish audience and it was a massive ratings draw, bringing in record-breaking figures for the station.
Last summer, 650,000 Irish viewers watched Limerick man Greg O’Shea win the show.
But the inaugural winter season of the dating show has been plagued by controversy, which took a dark turn with the death of the presenter, Ms Flack, last weekend.
The MoS has learned that the Monday night broadcast of the show had 175,000 viewers – 28,000, or 14%, fewer than the same day the previous week. The decline in viewers continued on Tuesday with 43,000, or 20%, fewer people viewing the villa antics live and online, at 159,000.
This was the same number of viewers who tuned in on Wednesday, representing a drop of 12,000, or 7%, on the same day the previous week. By Thursday, things had turned around for Love Island with 165,000 viewers – up 13,000, or 8.5%, on the same day last week.
Virgin Media has said that while the figures were down, there were several contributory factors including the airing of Champions League Football.
The figures are mirrored by those of ITV2, which licenses the show. Viewers in the UK deserted the show in droves in the past week as the death of Ms Flack continued to cause ripples and cast a dark spotlight on the programme, which has now seen four people take their own lives.
Viewers deserted the first episode of ITV2’s Love Island since the death of former presenter Flack with fewer than 2million people tuning in on Monday.
The viewing figures were down on the audience for the previous two episodes last week, which were 1.98million on Friday, and 1.97million on Thursday.
The current record audience for this series on ITV2 was 2.4million for the first show on January 12.
On her BBC radio show, the show’s current host, Bray presenter Laura Whitmore, urged people to ‘be kind’ to each other, referencing sentiments expressed by Flack in one of her final Instagram posts.