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Royal Wedding peaks at more than 5.7m

Hold the record books. There were staggering numbers watching the wedding of Wills and Kate on Friday night.

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So how big was the audience that watched the Royal Wedding?

Very big.

With so much coding of programmes and sports interrupting the event, it has been hard to get an overview of just how big the audience was.

But taking a look at the numbers were at a moment in time gives a better picture.

At 8:15pm William and Kate were in the middle of their vows (7:45pm Adelaide, 6:15pm Perth). Here are the numbers that were watching at that time.

Sydney: 8:15pm
Seven: 745,000
TEN: 71,000
Nine: 513,000
ABC1: 359,000

Melbourne: 8:15pm
7TWO: 406,000
TEN: 157,000
Nine: 780,000
ABC1: 536,000

Brisbane: 8:15pm
Seven: 441,000
TEN: 94,000
Nine: 317,000
ABC1: 220,000

Adelaide: 7:45pm
7TWO: 128,000
TEN: 42,000
Nine: 182,000
ABC1: 128,000

Perth: 6:15pm
Seven: 287,000
TEN: 57,000
Nine: 113,000
ABC1: 154,000

That’s a total of 5.73m for that moment during the broadcast, and reflects a figure close to what the event might have peaked at.

Nine pulled big numbers in Melbourne and Adelaide due to Seven switching to 7TWO when AFL started at 7:30pm. But 7TWO nevertheless did a brilliant job in attracting viewers who switched from Seven.

By contrast Seven was victorious in Sydney, Brisbane and due to the time difference, Perth. When Nine’s NRL kicked in at 8:30pm in Sydney and Brissy not enough switched to GEM.

The figure also doesn’t include any ABC News 24 simulcast, Pay TV channels, Regional viewers or viewers watching in pubs, clubs and assorted wedding parties.

Since OzTAM ratings began in 2001 the top average audience was the 2005 Australian Open between Hewitt v Safin (4.04 million) and 2010’s MasterChef Australia: Winner Announced (4.03 million).

31 Responses

  1. @ryan, could you please let me know which episode of Masterchef got “that figure”, a rating of 5.73M? Also, since when is 5.73M ‘an ok figure’? I would have thought it was a totally extraordinary figure, considering it is slightly more than 25% of the entire population of the country.

    The 8.15pm figures for Ten are absolutely shameful!! Heads need to roll over such a humiliating debacle. What possessed them to involve that repellant Fitzy in the coverage, well God only knows.

  2. We watched a lot of ABC to begin with and then Sky News HD for the bulk of it, the HD was brilliant. Switched to the Circle after that which was entertaining.

  3. Wow – I’ve just read all of the comments on this page and I’m stunned by the negativity of some! According to OzTam, there’s not a single television event in the past decade that has attracted more interest than the royal wedding, yet people still feel the need to dismiss it. Why? What do you hope to achieve by doing this? The fact is that more people chose to watch this one particular event than any other in the past decade (and probably longer).

  4. Ryan – Masterchef was only shown on one channel. It’s likely that if only one channel ran the royal wedding, 5.7m people would have been watching that one channel. The fact remains that 5.7m people were watching William and Kate say their vows at the same time – the channel breakdown takes absolutely nothing away from that. To describe it as an “OK” figure is missing the point. Did you really expect everyone to turn in to the same channel to watch the coverage, given the range of options?

  5. Just out of interest how many people normally watch tv on a Friday night?? ie was there an increase in the number of people watching TV for the wedding or do 5.7 Million people normally have their TV’s on Friday nights and it is just that there was nothing else on??

  7. Regardless of the quality of its coverage, I reckon Gem was always going to be up against it because of where it sits on the channel surfing order. With all the channels now, and no way of changing them like in the old analog days (to match Nine with the number 9 etc), Gem is in the middle of all the rubbish, whereas 7TWO is much quicker and easier to find.

    When we were channel surfing, we’d just flip between seven, 10 and abc, because they were all close to each other going up or down on the arrows on our remote so were therefore easier to access.

    How about The Circle’s special? Did it rate well? I hope so – it was good.

  9. Dont forget this was only the 5 major cities figures. About 7-8million people are discriminated against due to the 5 major cities only ratings.

    You can easily add another 2 million viewers for Newcastle, Tasmania, NT, Canberra, Geelong, Cairns ect.

  10. I watched it because I wanted to watch it. For those that say there was little choice there were a whole lot of other channels without it being on including sport. Plus there are things called DVDs and Blu-rays. So there was plenty of ways to miss it including the going out option people have mentioned. Also there is also the playing computer games option or go on the ‘net at the same time (one person chose that in the house ) . So people could opt out if they wanted. Some did. I’ll admit I didn’t know until the day and the time what I’d watch. Because I believe in going with what you feel like. On the day before 6pm I flicked between 7, 9 & 10 . Then around 6pm because I knew the ABC was going to have the BBC coverage and it wouldn’t be annoying, ill-informed and was without ads. I chose that.

  14. Hey, David – do we know when an actual idea of the ratings numbers will finally be compiled? Like, both worldwide and Australian, including pay-tv, peaks, averages and the like?

  15. @Kaylen don’t forget to add in ‘royal parties’… groups of people watching from one television! I think it might even be 1 out of every 3 people.

    Incredible numbers!

  16. @ nrc_02
    Iam glad those who watched loved it but the hype and hysteria killed it for me, I would have watched but I felt like I had been watching it for weeks. The highlight reel was enough for me the next day. If it had just been the wedding and fabulous pageantry it would have been fine but the media went mental once again and turned it into a competitive marathon !

  17. Jezza, the ratings include the number of people watching in each house, so it is 5.7m people not 5.7m households.

    And nrc_02, at least two out of every three Australians didn’t watch it. So most people did not care about the wedding. For something that was on 4 out of 5 FTA channels, and heavily, heavily advertised on them all, such a ratings figure isn’t exactly amazing. Not much more than what MasterChef final gets on a single channel.

  18. Whoa, that is epic and that figure certainly gives the lie to supposed public disinterest in the wedding. On the contrary, there was clearly huge interest in it, more than expected, I think. It should be officially declared a Right Royal Blockbuster. i reckon you could easily add another 1.5M or so to that figure, to take into account people watching at parties, pubs, pay tv channels, regional channels, etc. From memory, I think the opening ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Olympics got over 6M across the four FTA’s,, so I think the wedding must be the second most watched TV program in the last 11 years. Would that be right, David?

  21. Given the many wedding parties which will increase the multiplyer substantially, the final gigure could be huge. Add in people watching online and we may well hit 10 million…..Note to TV companies….nice respectful good news stories = huge ratings

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