Did Big Brother crossover help Love Island USA ratings?
Maybe some will consider the move (which we discuss more over at the link here) some sort of desperate attempt in order to push the numbers up. We honestly think they would have done this anyway. CBS loves to cross-promote some of their own properties and this is the case of a franchise being right in front of them. They would have been silly to ignore this altogether when there was a ratings opportunity for at least a few weeks.
Of course, the problem is that their crossover contestant was Winston, a guy who was sent home pre-jury last season and is notable mostly because of his bromance with Brett … who is mostly relevant right now because of how obsessed Kat is with him on this current season. Last night’s new episode generated a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is in line with how Love Island has done all season.
The good news for this franchise is this: There hasn’t been any sort of significant shifts in the numbers at all since Love Island first premiered. The viewers who watched the first episode have stuck with the premise and that may be enough for CBS to consider bringing it back. As for whether or not they’d consider doing this again, that’s a totally different story. This show is getting half the demo viewership of Big Brother so unless they have ideas of how to grow it or it’s insanely cheap for them to make, we’re not sure that they’d seriously consider it. We do wonder about the idea of doing live feeds for this show, but with the number of games/taped setups, they would only be on a few hours a day at most — we don’t know how interesting they would be when the dust settles.
We’ll see from here if CBS decides to bring over a more notable houseguest from Big Brother during the rest of the season. That could be the thing that leads to that big ratings bump.
What do you think about the latest Love Island USA ratings, and do you think CBS will air the rest of the season out? Share in the comments. (Photo: CBS.)