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Viewers prefer tradition for Royal Wedding

Australian viewers voted for a traditional Royal Wedding broadcast over an irreverent one.

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Australian viewers voted for a traditional Royal Wedding broadcast over an irreverent one last night as Seven’s broadcast of the event topped the night and TEN’s cheeky commentary tanked.

Seven’s broadcast ranked first with viewers, followed by Nine, ABC1 and TEN a distant fourth.

There was certainly a big audience glued to their sets for the night, but with coding of various segments and AFL / NRL taking over in some cities it is difficult to make clear-cut comparisons.

The highest ranked audience of the night appeared to be Seven’s early portion of the lead-up to the wedding, around 6:30pm AEST, with nearly 1.74m viewers. With regional viewers added in it was up to 2.38m.

By the time the wedding itself aired, 8pm AEST, Seven had AFL commitments in some cities and continued the wedding on 7TWO. Seven’s audience was 1.51m for the ceremony but 7TWO had another 513,000.

Nine’s Dame Edna and Today team reached up to 1.46m. By 8:30pm Nine had to switch to NRL in some cities and continued on GEM.  The ceremony was 717,000 with another 163,000 on GEM.

The ABC averaged 1.1m viewers across its entire evening broadcast, and therefore does not give us a clear comparison.

TEN’s lighthearted commentary with Fitzy and Wippa plummeted to just 349,000. TEN was shunned by most viewers, with its biggest audience for the night was TEN News at 463,000. However a primetime edition of The Circle at 385,000 was actually higher than their ceremony broadcast and three times higher than its average morning audience.

In network shares Seven stormed the night with 39.7% over Nine 26.7%, ABC 20.8%, TEN 9.7% and SBS% 3.1%.

7TWO reached as high as 8.0% for the night.

Week 18

66 Responses

  1. “Whoever decided on the lighthearted, irreverent approach to something as dignified and regal as a Royal Wedding, well, they shouldn’t be working in television programming.”

    This is interesting. Who is to blame when something fails? Of course it’s great when something risky works out and is successful, and everyone involved are regarded as geniuses. But if something doesn’t work out, is there a punishment? Does it get remembered in their records? Do you get fired?

  2. Nine’s “commentators” were totally disrespectful, referring to the King of Tonga as “Dodi Al Fayed” then “no, Dodi’s the dead one”, “that’s the father” (he’s dead too, morons).

  3. I watched ABC 1 because it was a Wedding … not a Comedy …
    as the other networks seem to think … so it deserved some Respect *rolls eyes*

    It was beautiful.

  7. To those expressing surprise at the astronomical figures – it’s absolutely clear that, in spite of what people might have said in public, interest in the wedding was extremely high, and a lot of people who would never admit it sat glued to their TVs last night. Had The Chaser special gone ahead, they would have attracted a different audience to those who watched the other coverage – most likely the droves that went to restaurants to avoid the coverage :-). Personally, I know many, many more people who were excited about the wedding than those who couldn’t care less. Teenagers tended to be indifferent, but most people in their early to mid 20s and older seemed quite keen (even a surprising number of guys, if the Facebook status updates last night are anything to go by, and I’m not just talking about the comments about Pippa Middleton!).

  8. Not surprising that the none qualified boofhead Fitzy failed and 10 management deserves the blame for putting him on. But just as pathetic was the childish performances of Karl & Lisa over at Nine.Ill-linformed, badly prepared and relied on giggling at their own jokes. Certainly weren’t helped by the mutton dressed up as lamb Kathy Lette who seems to only have a dozen one-liners she keeps repeating over the decades. Uninspiring television Channel 9 like most of your coverage these days.

  9. Was mostly flicking between ABC1 and the footy on 7 but did channel bash a little. Much prefered the BBC coverage to ITV on 7. They are clearly the best when it comes to Royal events. Had the misfortune to tune into 9 twice and hear Dame Edna. Tacky comes to mind. Didn’t even bother with 10 as I find Fitzy the most annoying person permitted near television cameras in the country.

  11. Not only was Ten’s feed delayed, the commentary was out of sync, so you’d heard Fitzy say “There’s Princess Beatrice” but she’d already been and gone from the screen when he did. And they even talked over the readings, which was weird.

    I flicked, but Seven’s and Nine’s coverage was certainly far better than Ten’s mess. That said, I flicked over to The Circle afterwards and thoroughly enjoyed it.

  12. Personally, I enjoyed 10s coverage…flicked over to 9 to see the dame, and flicked it back to 10…I liked the alternative…although Lucy MacDonald was the best of the bunch. But yeah, 10 probably had way too many ads.

  13. If you didn’t have foxtel then the only thing to watch was the BBC feed on ABC1,which was just as good except for HD.Seven,Nine and Ten………spare me.

  14. I had planned to watch on Channel 9 but after a few minutes of Edna Everage I switched to Channel 7. Edna was not funny at all & I don’t understand how or why he/she is still on TV.

  15. Seven should do their own coverage of the Logies tomorrow night from outside the venue- they’d probably beat Nine at that as well these days!! lol

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