Good Evening Britain beaten in the ratings by Love Island

Love Island has scored its highest overnight ratings, beating rival broadcast Good Evening Britain in the process.

Thursday’s episode of the ITV2 dating programme, which aired at 9.15pm, was watched by an average of 3.2 million viewers and had an audience share of 17.1%, according to overnight ratings.

The one-off late-night edition of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, which aired at the same time, had an average of 3.1 million viewers tuning in, with a 16.5% audience share.

Good Evening Britain peaked at 5.2 million, while Love Island, which saw 12 new singletons join the existing contestants, peaked at 3.6 million.

The programme, hosted by Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid and which included guests Danny Dyer and Jeremy Corbyn, was broadcast directly after the World Cup game between England and Belgium.

ITV’s coverage of the sporting event was watched by an average of 13 million viewers with a 62% audience share, with a five-minute peak of 18.6 million.

Morgan had previously expressed his hopes for his programme to beat Love Island, which he admittedly dislikes, in the ratings.

He celebrated Good Evening Britain’s trumping of Love Island’s peak numbers on Twitter, writing: “BOOM! Good Evening Britain peaked at 5.2m viewers last night, smashing Love Island which peaked at just 3.6m.

“Thanks for watching & restoring my faith in humanity!”

The industry standard is to measure the average number of viewers.

Wednesday’s edition of Love Island had already broken its own record to become the most-watched ITV2 programme ever, pulling in an average of three million viewers according to overnight ratings.

The figures for that episode were up by 1.3 million viewers on the equivalent episode last year.

Overnight ratings take into account those watching on catch-up channels ITV+1 and ITV2+1.