Love Island turns off viewers

Celebrity Love Island is failing to turn on UK viewers and has seen figures plummet.

14:43 21 May 2005

Celebrity Love Island is failing to turn on UK viewers and has seen figures plummet.

The show's producers are now rumoured to be considering pulling the show after it moved to a 22:00 BST slot and saw viewer numbers drop from 5.3 million for the opening show to 3.9 million on Thursday.

ITV programme makers had hoped that putting 12 sexy celebrity singletons on an island in the South Pacific would create some red hot action and viewing figures, but both have failed to materialise.

Critics have attacked the show as boring and bookmaker Ladbrokes has revealed that it is only taking 28 a day in bets on the outcome of the show.

However, ITV said it was pleased with the figures for Celebrity Island, and insisted they reflected the broadcast time.

An ITV spokeswoman said: "We wanted it to raise our profile with the younger group, and we achieved a 28 per cent share with 16- to 34-year-olds, up by 12 per cent on our normal year-to-date figures for that slot."

Last week ITV dropped Celebrity Wrestling from a Saturday night prime-time slot half way through its run in response to poor viewing figures against BBC One's Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, Michael Greco has revealed the only reason he is taking part in the show is because he is broke. The former EastEnder claims that he hates reality TV programmes, but has been struggling to make ends meet in recent years.

Greco is also due to take part in The Palm Beach Celebpoker Classic at the end of July, which will see a bunch of celebrities compete against professional players for a 120,000 prize at the Palm Beach Casino in Mayfair, London.