More than 14 million people tuned in to watch the televised coronation of King Charles III on BBC television, marking the first coronation to be held in the UK in 70 years.
The ceremony, which took place on Saturday, May 6th, was only the second royal coronation to be televised and the first to be broadcasted in colour. According to a statement released by the public broadcaster, at its peak, 13.4 million viewers watched the ceremony on the main BBC One channel, with an average of 11.9 million people tuning in throughout the day.
A signed version of the ceremony broadcasted on BBC Two peaked at 1.7 million viewers, averaging at 1.4 million. However, while the numbers were impressive, they were down compared to other major royal events.
Last year’s state funeral of King Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, attracted one of the biggest television audiences in the UK, with an estimated average audience of 26.2 million people watching on TV sets alone, peaking at 28 million, including 18.5 million viewers on the BBC.
The wedding of Charles’s son, Prince William, in 2011, was watched by more than 24 million viewers on BBC terrestrial television. The funeral of Charles’s first wife and William’s mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, was watched by over 32 million viewers in the UK.
The 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II is considered a breakthrough in broadcasting, as it was the first to be televised. At that time, 27 million people watched the ceremony on television and 11 million listened to the service on the radio. However, TV ownership was low at that time, and the BBC was the only broadcaster.
Since then, the media landscape has changed significantly, with dozens more channels, as well as online, on-demand, and streaming services. King Charles III’s coronation was also broadcast live by the commercial channel ITV and other broadcasters, including Sky News. Their viewing figures were not immediately available.