The King’s Coronation service took place on Saturday, May 6 at Westminster Abbey and it was watched by more than 18 million viewers in the UK, provisional figures show.
The ceremony saw the crowning of Charles and Camilla and it was broadcast on a range of channels between 11am and 1pm simultaneously, including BBC One and Two, ITV and Sky News.
An average of 18.8 million people watched across 11 channels and services, with audience figures peaking at 20.4 million when the King was crowned just after midday, according to overnight ratings released by the research organisation Barb.
The average audience for the King’s Coronation service at Westminster Abbey (11:00 – 12:59) was 18.8m across 11 channels and services. Reach was 22.4m, a share of 89%. Viewing peaked at 20.4m at 12:02 as the King was crowned.
— Barb (@BarbAudiences) May 7, 2023
How many people watched the Queen’s Coronation?
The figure is lower than the ratings for the late Queen’s funeral service last September which was seen by 26.5 million people across more than 50 TV channels.
In June 1953, it’s thought that millions watched the coronation of the Queen but there are no reliable figures, making comparisons with TV ratings of today difficult.
There was no organisation responsible for compiling and publishing ratings and no consistent way that the data was collected.
Instead, the BBC carried out its own surveys to find out what people had seen or heard on the TV and radio.
BBC staff interviewed a varying cross-section of people across the country and asked them to remember what they had watched recently before using the responses to estimate a figure for the overall number of viewers.
The BBC estimated that its television coverage of the event was seen by more than 20 million adults in Britain, based on surveys carried out after the coronation of Elizabeth II.
This number is remarkable considering the number of households with a TV licence on March 31, 1953, nine weeks before the coronation took place, stood at just 2.1 million.
With such a low number of TV licenses and a high estimated figure of viewers, it’s likely that people went to their friend's houses or to visit family members to watch the coronation.
In 1981, the current method of calculating TV audiences was established by the audience research organisation Barb.
Since then, the highest TV audience on record was for the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, in September 1997 which was seen by 31.0 million on the BBC and ITV.
The televised address by former prime minister Boris Johnson in March 2020 which saw him announce the first Covid-19 lockdown was watched by 28.2 million people.
The ratings for the King’s Coronation are also lower than the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games which had 24.2 million and 24.5 million viewers respectively on BBC One and the final of the Euro 2020 football championship in July 2021 which attracted a combined total of 22.5 million on BBC One and ITV.
It did, however, have more viewers than the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee concert which took place in front of Buckingham Palace last June as it was watched by an average of 13.1 million people on BBC One.
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