- By André Rodin-Paul
- BBC News
The moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury laid the crown of St. Edward on the king
Overnight figures showed that the King’s coronation was watched by an average of 18 million viewers in the UK.
The ceremony, which saw the coronation of King and Queen Camilla, was broadcast simultaneously across a range of channels between 11:00 and 13:00 GMT.
Audience measurement group Barb said viewership peaked at 20.4 million as the king was crowned just after midday.
The numbers are lower than when 26.5 million viewers watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
An average of 18.8 million people watched the coronation across 11 channels and services, including BBC One and Two, ITV and Sky News.
The BBC said a peak of 13.4 million viewers tuned in to the broadcast, led by Hu Edwards on BBC One, and the channel’s average viewership was 11.9 million.
ITV said an average of 3.3 million viewers watched the ceremony on ITV1 between 10:45 and 13:00.
Sky News had an average of 568,000 viewers during its coronation service broadcast, while GB News had an average of 176,000 viewers and TalkTV had an average of 14,000 viewers.
Channel 4 chose to show Johnny English Strikes Again instead of crowning an average of 138,000 people who would prefer to see Rowan Atkinson’s film. Meanwhile, on Channel 5, children enjoyed The Adventures of Paddington Bear and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Millions of people are believed to have watched the Queen’s coronation on TV in 1953 – but there are no reliable numbers, making it difficult to measure against this year’s ceremony. Based on polls conducted by the BBC at the time, it is estimated that more than 20 million adults in the UK watched the film.
The funeral of the king’s ex-wife Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 was watched by 31 million people on the BBC and ITV – making it the highest-grossing TV show ever.