After 10 days of mourning and wall-to-wall coverage by broadcasters, there was always going to be huge interest in the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.
But just how many Australians gathered around the Television (or other streaming devices) to view this momentous moment?
While it will always be impossible to truly calculate national viewership for an event broadcast across so many platforms. TV Blackbox has spent the last 24 hours analysing the data and is estimating an audience of approximately 4.9 million Australians tuned in to say goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II.
It’s a stunning figure which ranks it as one of the most watched events in Australian history.
You can read a full breakdown of the audience figures across all Australian networks below:
Channel 7
Channel 7 was the most watched individual channel throughout the evening with a national audience of 1.46 million viewers (975k metro) tuning in for the network’s evening coverage.
This figure includes a BVOD streaming audience of 66k via the 7plus platform. Viewers were clearly transfixed with the coverage leading the network to post substantial audience figures well past midnight.
Channel 9
Channel 9 also recorded strong audience figures with a national audience of 1.214 million viewers (879k metro) watching the network’s evening coverage.
This figure includes a BVOD streaming audience of 112k via 9Now.
9Now proved to be the most popular destination for live streaming the event with the service delivering audience figures approaching double of its rivals 7plus and ABC iview.
In an email to staff obtained by TV Blackbox, Nine’s Director of News, Darren Wick thanked his team for providing ‘outstanding’ coverage which culminated in over 30 hours of continuous broadcasting across Monday and Tuesday morning.
“The planning for this event began years ago. We locked in the London hosting positions in 2018 and have evolved our plans on a regular basis ever since.”
ABC
The ABC provided live simulcast coverage of the funeral service across two broadcast channels and streaming on iview.
The ABC’s evening coverage of the State Funeral attracted an average national audience of 1.07 million viewers (708k metro) on ABC TV.
An additional 518k (362k metro) viewers watching via the ABC News multichannel. The combination of the two channels ensured the ABC’s coverage of the historic moment was the most watched across all networks.
A national average audience of 58k streamed the broadcast via the iview platform. There was a total of 631,000 live stream plays on iview throughout Monday’s coverage of the event. Approximately 70% of the viewers on iview were aged below 54.
Sky News
Coverage of The Queen’s Funeral on Foxtel delivered Sky News its highest rating day of the year, beating its 2022 Election coverage.
Viewership peaked between 8pm-9pm, delivering a total national average audience of 254,500 across the channels of Sky News, Sky News Extra and Sky News UK (linear and Foxtel Go/Now).
The Sky News Regional free-to-air channel which is broadcast across the bulk of regional Australia also had its most successful day of the year with coverage peaking between 9pm-10pm with a total average audience of 83k.
Channel 10
Channel 10 opted to stick with its regular broadcast schedule of The Amazing Race – 256k (185k metro) and Have You Been Paying Attention – 441k (324k metro) on Monday evening. The network did however present coverage of the Funeral on a multichannel.
While the network declined to provide data for this article, TV Blackbox can report a special edition of The Project on 10 Bold achieved a national audience of just 111k (91k metro). Note: Data does not include streaming on 10 Play.
SBS
SBS provided coverage of the funeral on its main channel with the broadcaster securing a national average audience of 150k (104k metro). Note: Data does not include streaming on SBS On Demand.
Note: TV Blackbox would like to sincerely thank the publicists across the broadcasters who supplied data for this article.
