5.7 Million Join ITV For Celebrity Love In

ITV launched its latest celebrity-packed reality show last night, drawing a peak of 5.67 million viewers with Celebrity Love Island, which promises to provide audiences with plenty of steamy sea-side action for the duration of its five-week run.

The show went head to head with BBC1’s crime drama, New Tricks, which bested the reality love-in with a peak of 7.23 million adults. However, in Love Island‘s target audience of 16-34 year olds the show secured a peak of 2 million, trouncing all of its terrestrial rivals who failed to break the 1 million mark.

The return to form for ITV follows the broadcaster’s decision last week to axe Celebrity Wrestling after just three weeks, citing an ever declining audience share as the reason for its demise (see ITV Drops Wrestling As Ratings Hit The Floor).

The new show is a much more glamorous affair, however, with ten celebrities whisked to a Fijian island, with the fate of their love lives handed to ITV1 viewers via text and phone votes.

The interactive format shows a continued commitment by ITV to alternative revenue streams such as text and phone polls. The broadcaster has made no secret of pursuing interactive revenues, a move which will be made all the easier by the BBC’s requirement under its new charter to steer clear of programmes which rely on such formats (see BBC Reality Cuts Leave Door Open For ITV).

Elsewhere, Channel 4 is gearing up for the launch of Big Brother‘s sixth series, which will run for an unprecedented 100 days, overlapping with Celebrity Love Island to provide a summer of unrivalled reality-show broadcasts.

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