The coronation of King Charles was watched by a peak television audience of 20 million Britons on Saturday, according to official viewing figures.
This makes Saturday’s event the most watched TV broadcast of the year by some way, but the audience is substantially smaller than the 29 million Britons who watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September.
The viewing figures for the coronation at Westminster Abbey may have been boosted by the poor weather in parts of the UK, which forced people to stay inside and meant outdoor viewing parties were largely empty due to the rain.
The vast majority of the audience watched the BBC’s coverage, which was helmed by Huw Edwards and broadcast across BBC One, BBC Two and the BBC News channel to a peak audience of 15.5 million. ITV’s coverage topped out at 3.6 million viewers and Sky’s coverage peaked at 800,000 across Sky News and Sky Showcase, according to official Barb viewing figures provided by agency Digital-i.
Before the coronation, there had been a dispute with newspaper groups – and the smaller channels GB News and TalkTV – over access to footage. They were upset that the BBC was only willing to share live footage of the coronation at a very high price. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported concerns within the BBC about a policy of submitting some footage to the royal palace for approval.
There was limited airtime given to anti-monarchist views during Saturday’s broadcasts, despite concern over the police arresting the head of the leading republican movement hours before the coronation.
The television viewing figures do not include the small but substantial number of people who will have watched the coronation through livestreams and through non-traditional broadcast methods such as YouTube.
Some channels chose to ignore the coronation altogether, with mixed results. Channel 4 convinced 138,000 people that they would prefer to spend a rainy Saturday morning watching Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English Strikes Again rather than try to glimpse King Charles III being anointed with holy oil from a 12th-century ceremonial spoon.