Nine hints at Love Island return

Nine is really missing Love Island on 9Now and plans to return the show in 2021, according to CEO Hugh Marks.

Speaking this week about Broadcast Video on Demand viewing, he told investors and media that Love Island Australia and international versions would return.

“If you look year on year generally through that winter period is when we would play Love Island, it’s a dominant performer in BVOD. We had neither the Australian Love Island nor any of the offshore versions (which) have all been postponed due to COVID.

“So we were always going to get some audience loss through that period against next year. Now we could have gone and overspent and bought a whole bunch of programs to to fill in that loss. But we took the view that we’re better off focusing on long term profitability, long term consistency. So those are shows that will be back as we go into calendar year ’21.”

Seven has recently taken the lead in total BVOD audiences but Marks says The Block will help it strengthen.

“You’ll start to see our BVOD audience share also start to increase now as we go into… a heavier part of our schedule as we go into the end of the year. In fact, a lot of The Block viewing – it’s interesting this year has been more competitive- (but) we’ve seen a quite significant increase in Block viewing in BVOD.

A US version of Love Island, filmed under “quarantine bubble” restrictions at a Las Vegas hotel, has recently begun airing stateside and is expected to run on 9Now.