Northeastern professor Steve Granelli says the live format and constant new episodes make the show very popular.

People have their teams. They have their watch parties. Each new airing is fodder for water cooler and social media discussions.
The show in discussion? โLove Island,โ of course.
The new season of the U.S. version of the British reality series has caught fire in a way that other dating shows have not. It seems like everyone is talking about the latest drama from the charm of โAmaya Papayaโ (one of the contestants) to another one, Cierra Ortega, being sent home when a video resurfaced of her using a racial slur.
Why the constant chatter about โLove Islandโ over other reality dating shows like โThe Bachelorโ or prestige TV like โThe Bearโ? Part of it is the formatting, says Steve Granelli, a pop culture expert and associate teaching professor of communications at Northeastern University.
Unlike โThe Bear,โ which is released a season at a time on Hulu, or โThe Bachelor,โ which usually has one episode a week air on ABC, โLove Islandโ drops six hour-long episodes a week that people often gather together to watch.
โThereโs always new content that people can watch,โ Granelli says. โLove Island is something that you can engage with during the particular episode. But the fandom is so fervent that itโs going to continue.โ
โYou can be watching TikTok compilations of different characters. You could be going on subreddits and you can be reading about peopleโs backgrounds. Because itโs this kind of proto-reality, it extends like it gives us the viewing experience, but then it extends into us trying to figure out who these people are in โreal life.โ It has a bunch of different avenues for engagement outside of just the week-to-week airing of the episodes,โ he says.

The constant content is also being churned out in, more or less, real time. Unlike shows like โLove is Blind,โ which are filmed months before airing, โLove Islandโ airs episodes filmed the day prior, which creates what Granelli says is a sense of immediacy.
โItโs the perception of closeness that you have with either a person or a situation,โ he explains. โThe closer that weโre able to feel to a person or to a situation, the more weโre going to identify with it and the more weโre going to follow it. This is the reason why live is always going to be more inherently intriguing than something on tape.โ
The way the show is shot also allows for more audience interaction and for producers to shape the narrative in response to this. Contestants can be eliminated in response to real-life incidents (two have been sent home this season for racist remarks they made in the past). Fans can also vote and shift the outcome of the show by choosing their favorite contestants or who should pair up as a couple.
This season, audience members noticed chemistry between Nic and Olandria, two contestants who were always with other people. Fans began to make edits of the two and host Ariana Madix admitted sheโd like to see them explore their chemistry. So the show came up with chances to push them together.
This type of producer reaction to audience preferences is done by many other genres, from scripted series to professional wrestling. Producers tune in to online conversations and respond to what fans are saying. โLove Islandโ has just taken advantage of the immediacy of its shooting schedule to shape storylines even more than any other showโs producers.
But while this might give fans a sense of satisfaction and even power, Granelli says itโs a false one.
โI would caution the fans of โLove Islandโ that as soon as you start to feel like youโre going to have some agency, the violation of that agency is going to be what draws you back in,โ Granelli says. โTheyโre not going to give you what you want because as soon as they give you what you want, youโre going to stop watching. My prediction (is that) itโs not going to end the way the fans want because if it does, thereโs no reason to watch next season. โฆ Theyโre making up the rules as they go along, which is fine because they get that theyโre allowed to do that, like theyโre the producers.โ