Love Island Stays Buoyant

Love Island is continuing to perform better now the Big Brother behemoth has departed the nation’s television screens.

The reality show attracted a peak of 2.5 million adult viewers (a 13% audience share) in its hour long slot yesterday evening and across the whole programme it did almost as well, with an average audience of 2.3 million adults (a 12% audience share) for the entire hour.

As has been the case so often this summer for ITV1, soccer did not attract the sort of figures that one might have expected. The Liverpool v Maccabi Haifa match managed a peak of 4.2 million adults (a 21% audience share) in its prime time position. Of course, with Liverpool having won the first leg (2-1) perhaps viewers decided the result was a foregone conclusion.

However, the night belonged to BBC1, as Eastenders, Holby City and post office drama Sorted all brought in more viewers than the other channels could muster.

Eastenders attracted a peak audience of 7.6 million adult viewers (a 42% audience share) in its 7.30pm timeslot and was followed by Holby City, which managed to bring in a peak of 6 million adults (a 30.7% audience share).

Sorted meanwhile, delivered the goods at 9pm, with a peak of 5 million viewers (a 25.5% audience share), and it also had a very healthy average audience figure across its hour long running time, with 4.6 million adults (a 23% audience share) keeping their eyes glued to the gritty drama.

Only one show came near to challenging BBC1’s dominance on the night, and that was Emmerdale at 7pm, which picked up a peak audience of 6.2 million adults (a 38% audience share). In the process it soundly beat the Beeb’s new Nationwide style programme The One Show, which had a peak figure of 3.6 million adults during the same period.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk