Love Island has a disappointing debut on CBS

Entertainment Weekly

Only about 2.7 million viewers (0.6 in the key 18-49 demo) watched the debut of the American versionof the hit British reality show after CBS spent a lot of money on promotion. "That’s a lot less than recent episodes of other summer broadcast reality fare such as ABC’s The Bachelorette (1.5 in the demo), CBS’ Big Brother (1.2) and NBC’s America’s Got Talent (1.4), and seems especially low for a publicized series premiere," says EW's James Hibberd. As he points out, CBS has bet big on Love Island, scheduling it for "five nights a week for the next four weeks — a massive and highly unusual commitment to a new series." Executive producer David Eilenberg said in an interview published earlier this week that CBS has given the "biggest first season commitment a broadcaster has given to a new reality format." Love Island suffered particularly against the stiff competition of NBC's America's Got Talent and the MLB All-Star Game on Fox. Meanwhile, NBC's new comedy competition Bring the Funny debuted to 6.2 million off of Got Talent's lead-in.