Jermaine Jackson, Michael Jackson’s brother, was among those who performed at the artist’s memorial service, one of the most watched in history.About 31 million people in the United States tuned in to the television coverage of Michael Jackson’s star-studded farewell on Tuesday afternoon, Nielsen said, easily making it one of the most-w
A potpourri of channels, including ABC, CNN, Univision and VH1 Classic, showed the nearly three-hour service on Tuesday, leading some critics to draw comparisons to state funeral services for former presidents. Indeed, Mr. Jackson’s memorial at the Staples Center drew more attention than the three-hour funeral for President Gerald Ford in 2007, which was watched by an average of 15 million
The estimated 31.1 million people who watched Mr. Jackson’s memorial on TV represented about 21 percent of all United States households with TV sets. According to Nielsen, the same percentage of households watched coverage of the not-guilty verdict in Mr. Jackson’s trial on charges of sexual abuse in 2005.
Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 was shown on eight channels and was watched by 27 percent of households.
In addition to the TV ratings, many millions of people watched the service on the Internet, as Jenna Wortham reports on the Bits blog.
Citing internal data, CNN.com said it served 4.4 million live video streams during the service; MSNBC.com said it counted 3.1 million. Yahoo reported 5 million total streams.
viewers, Nielsen said.
The two-hour burial of President Ronald Reagan in 2004 was watched by about 35 million, but the four-hour funeral service for Mr. Reagan later that day was watched by about 21 million. (Longer events tend to draw lower ratings, even if higher numbers of people sampled the coverage, because the audience estimates are averages over the entire time period.)
That said, the audience totals for a combined 18 channels were only slightly higher than the ones for the “American Idol” singing competition on Fox
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