Estimated reading time: 10 minute(s)
Claim:
HRH Prince William, Prince of Wales, claims 5.1 billion people watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral – and says it’s 63% of the world’s population.
Verdict:
Available data show that the claim that 5.1 billion people – stated to be 63% of the world’s population – watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral is false and misleading.
Findings show that a calculable 32.5 million watched the Queen’s funeral – which definitely is not 65% of the world’s over 7 billion population.
Full Text:
Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving monarch in the United Kingdom, who reigned for 70 years, died at Balmoral aged 96, on September 8th, 2022.
A state funeral service was held at London’s Westminster Abbey for Britain Queen Elizabeth II.
The Queen was interred in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle after the official and highly televised procession and service on September 19.
The event was attended by world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, notable politicians, members of the royal household and well-wishers.
As the farewell ceremony was wrapped up, HRH Prince William, Prince of Wales, posted on Twitter that 5.1 billion people watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral – and said it’s 63% of the world’s population.
The Queen’s farewell ceremony saw an overwhelming crowd, which made many people project that the queue would outrank the longest queue in the world record.
The post has since garnered over 5k retweets, 2.7k quote tweets and 47.3k likes.
Verification:
Several international media publish data on the number of people that watched and attended the commemoration for the Britain Queen.
Findings by PLATFORM TIMES reveals that millions of people indeed watched the widely televised event of the Queen’s farewell.
Reports by notable media including ABC News, BBC, The Guardian among other credible media outlets also consent to this.
The BBC says 32.5m viewers watched at least three minutes of its coverage.
According to the BBC, the majority of that number – 32.5 million – watched the state funeral on the BBC, with viewers peaking at 22.4 million across all BBC channels.
A further analysis showed that BBC One’s coverage of Monday’s commemoration events peaked at 19.5 million viewers, while BBC Two hit 2 million for its sign language coverage.
Furthermore, ITV hit 5.3 million viewers, and Sky News attracted a maximum of 934,000 people.
More than 50 UK channels broadcast the service.
“All the channels were offering the same core footage but with different experts and presenters”, The Guardian noted.
Further search by PLATFORM TIMES revealed an average of 26.2 million viewers watched the Westminster Abbey funeral service between 11:00 and 12:00 across all channels, with 18.5 million of those watching on the BBC.
However, in comparison, Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 had more than 32 million UK viewers.
A similar number are thought to have watched England’s World Cup victory in 1966, although that occurred before the modern TV ratings system began.
Almost 27.7 million watched Boris Johnson’s Prime Ministerial statement on 10 May 2020, when he set out a plan to ease the first Covid lockdown.
And the London 2012 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies each attracted almost 24.5 million viewers.
Conclusion:
Based on available data from international media coverage, a total of 32.5 million people watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral ceremony.
PLATFORM TIMES discovered that TV analysts had projected that over four billion persons were expected to watch
the event – an estimation that fell short.
However, PLATFORM TIMES can conclude that, the number of people who tuned in to watch the widely televised Britain’s Queen funeral is in the number of million – 32.5 – and not billion as claimed – unless extra data is revealed.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s)
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