★★★★★ 0/5

Viewers prefer tradition for Royal Wedding

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

66
Leave a comment

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. it was always going to tank as Fitzy and Wippa are obnoxious and unfunny. 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. I was torn last night, as I wanted to watch the final instalment of The Pillars of the Earth, but the wedding ceremony was so darn beautiful that I stayed watching that. How gorgeous is Westminster Abbey, my God it is divine. And the choir *swoon*. The music was outstanding. Oh yeah, and the bride and groom looked pretty fantastic as well! I watched Seven’s coverage with the ceremony feed from ITN. It was very good, Chris Bath and Matt White were great.

  3. Who was thet “Wippa” bloke? I’m north of the Murray so excuse my ignorance for not having heard of him before last night.
    Guess TEN’s advertisers will be looking for a whole heap of make-goods.
    7 gets 2m for the ceremony. 9 gets <1m. Hmmm.

  5. I flick to channel 10 for 2 seconds and it had shocking audio in there coverage and put back to the ABC. Looking at the breaking out of audience shares. 7TWO outrated 10 for the night 8% to 7.7% (there a story helped by the wedding been shown in Melbourne on 7two as 7 went to the footy at 7.30).

  6. Well good on those who stayed with Ten to watch the Circle girls!!! Was all a lot of fun! Gorgi Coghlan even did the worm on the studio floor, not once but three times! Was a great moment of television!

  9. I ended up on CNN because they had Vera Wang giving fashion commentary. I alternated between this and 7 mainly because the hosts there at least knew who everyone was and were not guessing all night long.

  10. The best royal wedding coverage goes to BBC – from Foxtel -UKTV, no interruption, no ads and given insight as free to air will not be able to show.

  15. I watched the ABC coverage taken directly from BBC and it was superb. I think the ban on Chaser was a blessing in disguise based on the numbers for 10.

  17. I was watching Ten mostly last night but they did have plenty of ads during The Circle and the Wedding Project too – although I did enjoy the coverage from both of those programs before and after the event. Unfortunate that it scored so low but when it’s a big event like this people will naturally gravitate to Seven, Nine or ABC. Ten is traditionally the alternative and I think they did deliver that.

  18. Was going to watch the Chaser’s commentary but had to watch the wedding on another. I picked the ABC1 coverage because I can trust the ABC and I know they wouldn’t have any annoying personalities covering it or anyone who would spoil it. Their coverage only went from 5:30pm til 10:15pm Adelaide time and I knew there would not be any ads at all through the entire coverage. The ABC felt like the most relevant network to cover this as most of the British programs I watch are on the ABC. ABC also coded the event as one program whereas the others had different programs just to get more programs into the top 10.

    Football did stuff up things a bit for 7 and 9 and luckily the wedding was live across Australia. The only highlight for 10 was that The Circle got its biggest audience ever despite being on in primetime but it might give it a boost in the mornings. People give 7 and to some extent 9 too much of a chance and leave poor 10 out like it doesn’t exist. Even the ABC needs to be given more of a chance.

  20. It’ll be interesting to see the ratings when they’re all figured out. I’m already hearing that the online streaming of the event alone has broken records.

  21. I must eat humble pie.

    I IQ’d the TEN coverage and went over to Nine to watch it Live. At least Nine has the courtesy to show the the ceremony ad free. Switching over to GEM halfway was annoying due to the continuous breaking up of the digital signal.

    Overall not happy with TEN. Too many ads and unnecessary commentary from Fitzy and Wippa, i only lasted 2 minutes with them. Flying them over to do this was such a waste. It would have been better for Lucy McDonald to do it solo.

  23. I think Nine were killed by NRL commitments.

    But TEN was a disaster, they barely cleared a lot of the digital channels on shares!

    Good job from Seven, I watched them and enjoyed their commentary and thought they did a respectable job.

  24. I reckon the chaser thing would have been fighting Ten for last place, only because people would rather make their own comments on what is happening rather than having to listen to hear what the comedians have to say. we had a party at our house so for the most part the commentators were left as background noise.

    Im curious to your opinion on the Global figures. what do you/did you think it would be. 2 Billion seems awfully high if you ask me…..but im not a expert

  25. TEN was given the flick because it was full of ads, especially during the Circle. They were obviously trying to take advantage of the expectant number of viewers. ABC1 was in my opinion the best of the night.

Leave a Reply