Jackson's Funeral Drew 31.1 Million Viewers In The U.S.
Posted on Thu Jul 9th, 2009 7:20am PDT By X17 Staff
image courtesy of AEGTuesday's Michael Jackson memorial was seen by 31.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. 18 cable and broadcast networks carried the three-hour special, and millions of additional viewers watched the coverage online.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, MSNBC.com (19 million streams) and MSN.com (9.7 million) broke their all-time streaming video records with Tuesday's event, and ABC's digital network delivered nearly 6 million streams for viewers all over the globe.
Here's the numbers breakdown for the networks: 5.3 million people tuned in to ABC and CNN, 5.1 million watched NBC's coverage, 3.9 million watched CBS, and Fox News and MSNBC had 2.2 and 1.4 million viewers respectively.
AEG Live told the LA Times that they expect 1 billion people watched worldwide, and the only publicly broadcast funerals that had more viewers were those of for Ronald Reagan in 2004 (35.1 million) and the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 (33.3 million). The BBC estimated that Princess Diana's funeral attracted 2.5 billion viewers worldwide.
