America’s Mad About Harry & Meghan; Nearly 30M Watch Royal Wedding Live
It was very early in the morning on this side of the Atlantic but 29.2 million Americans tuned in to watch live the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle yesterday.
Seen on 15 networks stateside in the early morning, Saturday’s royal nuptials with the American born bride from St. George’s Chapel was up solidly from the 23 million who watched televised ceremony of Prince William and Kate Middleton back in 2011, according to Nielsen. That April royal wedding seven years ago was aired on 11 networks.
The metric from the ratings company for yesterday’s gilded gathering covers the 7 – 8:15 AM ET ceremony from the UK on ABC (inclusive of Freeform simulcast), BBC America, CBS, CNN, CNNe, E!, Fox News Channel, HLN, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, Telemundo, TLC and Univision. In household numbers, Harry and Meghan drew 23.7 million to William and Kate’s 18.6 million. The newly minted Duke and Duchess of Sussex hit 6.9 million interactions overall across Facebook and Twitter on social media, which is pretty good early Saturday morning by any standards.
On NBC, ABC, and CBS the event pulled 17.6 million viewers between 6 and 9 AM EST. With 6.4 million viewers, the Comcast-owned network edged out the Disney-owned network’s audience of 6.34 million to win the monarchist morning with the former Suits co-star. Among cable news networks, Fox News Channel came out on top with 2.036 million watching the Murdoch-owned outlet’s coverage.
On the broadcast nets alone, yesterday’s wedding between Harry and Meghan outpaced the Prince’s parents’ wedding back in 1981. Just over 17 million people saw Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana wed on the big four network in the era before cable.
This year’s Royal Wedding seemed very laid back and not as buttoned up as Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding. With guest celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Idris Elba, George & Amal Clooney, David & Victoria Beckham, James Corden, Serena Williams and Markle’s Suits co-stars, it seemed relaxed and grounded but still gave us that royal fairytale appeal.
Markle donned a Givenchy haute couture gown in a ceremony that honored royal tradition and folded in the bride’s African American heritage with a passionate sermon about the “power of love” from Bishop Michael Curry that took the Internet by storm as well as an unforgettable performance of “Stand By Me” by Karen Gibson and the Kingdom Choir.
Having said that, with another royal just recently born to Prince William and the former Kate Middleton to join their previous two children, it looks like won’t be another wedding of this scope for while.
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