News & Views

The royal wedding

17 May 2011

The Royal Wedding on 29th April between the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge marked the highest television audience of 2011 so far with a peak audience of 26.3m viewers and 36.7m viewers in total watching some part of the wedding coverage.

Coverage ran across 12 Barb reported channels (including +1s) capturing the arrival of the bride, groom and guests, the ceremony and subsequent procession back to Buckingham Palace and culminating in the now traditional balcony kiss.

The ceremony itself running from approximately 11am to 12:10pm achieved an average audience of 26.0m viewers, it’s peak of 26.3m viewers was at 11:08am, when the Duchess of Cambridge reached the altar.

Royal Wedding Ceremony Average Audience

BBC1 (SD & HD) saw the largest audience for the ceremony with 18.9m compared to 5.9m for ITV1 (SD & HD). All other channels accounted for 1.2m viewers cumulatively. Across Total TV, the Royal Wedding ceremony held a 91.2% audience share.

HD
The wedding of William and Catherine was the first Royal Wedding to be broadcast in high definition. 12.3% (3.2m) of the average audience viewed the ceremony via an HD service.

Minute by minute viewing
The chart below shows the minute by minute consolidated audiences across all channels (including realigned +1 viewing) to the Royal Wedding coverage from 10:00 to 13:40.

Royal Wedding Total Viewing

Reach
In addition to the live coverage, various highlights programmes were shown throughout the day for those who missed the event.

Not including News programming, a total of 36.7m individuals (64% of all individuals) watched some part of the Royal Wedding Coverage.