This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Jacksons v AEG Timeline Media
Mega viewing for Jacko memorial
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 9 July 2009
One last bit of Jacko. And Michael Jackson’s big memorial bash was watched by 31.1 million people in the US on Tuesday, according to the aforementioned ratings people Nielsen. The two hour tribute show was aired by 18 TV networks in America. That makes it the third biggest dead-person-related TV broadcast in the US – behind the burial of Ronald Reagan and the funeral of Princess Diana.
UK TV ratings for the memorial are estimated at just over 6 million. Over here BBC Two, BBC News, Five, Sky News and Sky Arts all showed the show. In France ratings people say about 10 million people tuned in, while ratings for Germany are a massive 20 million, nearly a quarter of the population. Online MSNBC say 19 million people logged into its webcast of the show, while MSN.com say they had 9.7 million people streaming the show from their servers.
Over all, show producers AEG reckon about a billion people watched the show live, which is somewhere behind the 2.5 billion who tuned in to the aforementioned Princess Of Wales post-death shindig at Westminster Abbey, but it’s still an awful lot of people. Simon Cowell really ought to get a Shaheen Jafargholi single out soon.
