Huge Australian TV audience for Royal wedding

Tim Burrowes

May 20, 2018 2:28

The Royal wedding proved to be a huge ratings draw, delivering Seven and Nine some of the biggest Saturday night ratings of the year.

The ceremony – perfectly timed for Australian primetime – saw an average of 1.95m metro viewers tune in for Seven’s coverage, making it the most watched program of the week. This number rose to an average of 2.6m, taking into account regional viewers too. Peak national viewing approached 2.9m for Seven.

The wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attracted a further 1.475m metro viewers for Nine, making it the top rating show of the week for the network.

The first kiss! #9News pic.twitter.com/RJaDSxqJXb

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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2 COMMENTS

Jo 21 May 18

Channel 7 spent hundreds of thousands for a broadcast they aired in standard definition. What an absolute joke. The same picture quality as Diana’s wedding in 1981.

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faux 22 May 18

And millions of people watched it. And Seven no doubt achieved the advertising/publicity/whatever goals they had.

It goes to show that people will watch things at low resolution if that’s what something they want to watch is available in. They could have watched essentially the same coverage on 9HD, ABC HD or SBS HD, but they chose not to.

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