Tuesday’s lavish Michael Jackson memorial was seen by 31.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Though a staggering audience for a midweek morning after the Fourth of July holiday, the number falls shy of the linear viewership for the burial of Ronald Reagan (35.1 million) in 2004 and the funeral of Princess Diana (33.3 million) in 1997.
It’s a larger number of viewers than watched Reagan’s funeral (20.8 million) or the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II (8.8 million), however.
A stunning 18 cable and broadcast networks carried the three-hour telecast, ranging from news outlets to entertainment channels such as MTV and E!
Related Stories
Millions of additional viewers watched online and overseas. Given the steep increase in Internet viewing each year, it’s likely that more U.S. viewers watched Jackson’s memorial overall than Reagan or Diana if all forms of viewing were tallied.
For instance, both MSNBC.com (19 million streams) and MSN.com (9.7 million) broke their all-time streaming video records with Tuesday’s event. ABC’s digital network delivered nearly 6 million streams.
Memorial organizer AEG Live told the Los Angeles Times that they expect 1 billion people watched worldwide, but the BBC estimated 2.5 billion worldwide for Diana.
Some: Network-by-network viewership. Looks like ABC and CNN essentially tied for the top spot:
ABC: 5.3 million
CNN: 5.3
NBC: 5.1
CBS: 3.9
Fox News: 2.2
MSNBC: 1.4
In the U.K., more than 6 million people watched the live primetimebroadcasts of the service.
The memorial was screened live on BBC 2, whichattracted an average of 4 million viewers and a 19% audience share,according to unofficial overnight figures. The audience peaked at 5.2million toward the end of the service at Staples Center inLos Angeles. Channel Five’s coverage had an audience of 1.2million and a 5% share between 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the U.K. And Sky Newshad an average audience of 897,000 for its coverage.
In Germany, more than 20 million people — almost aquarter of the country’s population of 83 million — saw the livetransmission as well as other reports about the funeral on more than 10TV stations, according to market research company Media Control.
On the main national terrestrial channels in France, about 10 million people watched coverage of the memorial, more than a50% audience share, according to audience measurement companyMediametrie.
With additional reporting by Billboard’s Andre Paine in London.
Note: Nielsen issued a correction to its original announced viewership and network tally for the Jackson memorial; this post was updated to reflect their new numbers.
