Contributor Collaborative 2: Predictions for Love Island


Thanks everyone for making the first edition of Contributor Collaborative a success. If you missed it, you can view it by clicking here.

The second edition focuses on Love Island, which was a popular choice in the survey we sent out prior to the first edition. Alongside my own, here are thoughts by Gena, Rebecca, and Jessica.

Gena
I'm not really a fan of reality TV anyway, but Love Island airing every weeknight just seems like overkill -- even if CBS does initially attract the younger audience it's apparently aiming for, I could see them quickly getting burned out. It'll be interesting to see the numbers over the course of the first week.

Rebecca
This has all the ingredients to work... on MTV. On CBS, not so much. Love Island has a very different target audience than the typical CBS show. Big Brother is the exception, not the rule. I find it hard to believe that Love Island will be the rare young-skewing concept to break out on CBS, and the fact that it's airing so frequently probably won't help it if it would somehow manage to start strong. Fox similarly tried to launch its own new dating show this summer with Paradise Hotel. That attempt failed miserably. And Fox's audience is certainly better suited for a dating show than CBS. Love Island isn't completely doomed just because of a similar show flopping, but it certainly doesn't bode well for it. In the end, I think this ends up being part of a long line of high-profile CBS one-and-done reality flops.

Jessica
The anticipated debut of the US edition of Love Island will make its way to CBS airwaves. But like many of the CBS newbies with a different target audience, I believe this is not going to live up to the hype, as far as ratings goes. When Paradise Hotel on FOX premiered abysmally, I knew something similar will happen with Love Island. Top that off with a host people may not recognize unless you watch commercials or follow her on Instagram, and that will be a recipe for ratings disaster. Or would it? We'll let the jury decide once the ratings are out.

The Ratings Junkie
I just don't see Love Island working on CBS. Sure, the British version is huge and even does well on Hulu, but this does not look like something CBS's audience will enjoy. If it aired directly following Big Brother then maybe it would have a decent shot, but even then Big Brother has fallen quite a bit this year. This is supposed to air five nights a week, but time will tell if that actually happens. Remember, FOX decreased the amount of times Paradise Hotel aired per week when they saw how badly it was doing. Some international formats (like The Masked Singer, Pop/American Idol, The Voice) have done great in the United States, but I think this will be more of a My Kitchen Rules-type player, if anyone even remembers that show.

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