Not Feeling the Love Yet

Love Island has yet to bask in the ratings glory of its on-demand popularity.

TVNZ 2 has been stripping season three of the ITV hit post-9.30 over the last two weeks but there’s no sign of momentum starting to build.

Monday’s episode averaged only 1.7% of TVNZ 2’s target audience, 18-49 year-olds, which was higher than Three’s Blue Bloods (1.3%) but well behind TVNZ 1’s Hunted (2.4%) and less than half the viewership of lead-in Wentworth (4.8%).

Friday’s episode averaged 1.9%, which was better than TVNZ 1’s Ordinary Lies (1.5%) and Coronation Street (1.6%), which it overlapped, but no match for Three’s 7Days (4.8%) and Fail Army (2.5%).

Last week TVNZ provided figures that showed more than 548,000 18-49 year-olds had tuned in to at least one episode, with the series averaging 159,000 of this demographic for each episode.

Over the same period, 1.069 million viewers aged 5+ had tuned in to at least one episode, with each episode averaging 258,000.

From March to date, there have been 2.091 million streams of Love Island’s 51 episodes on TVNZ OnDemand.

And when the series was launched nightly on TVNZ 2, TVNZ’s Director of Content, Cate Slater, said in a statement:

“Love Island is a show we recently acquired as an OnDemand exclusive, with new episodes available daily (following fast after the UK broadcast), and the full series to date available so viewers can watch from the start.

“It’s gone gangbusters, so we’ve listened to our viewers and have picked it up for TVNZ 2 where it will play from 14 August.

“Love Island is a phenomenon in the UK and here on TVNZ OnDemand, and we feel it has the potential to reach an even broader audience in New Zealand.

“It has obviously resonated with viewers which it did in the UK too. The final had the highest ratings in ITV2’s history.

“It’s the ultimate guilty pleasure and highly addictive. With its multi-day format, incredible casting and all the emotions on show it’s just such an easy and compelling watch.”