If you happened to tune in to watch Michael Jackson’s memorial service on Tuesday, then you are not alone. According to Nielsen Media Research (a ratings system, duh), 31 million people flipped on the TV to watch the emotional tribute to the King of Pop. While that’s an insane number of people to flip on the television set in the middle of the day, you’d be surprised to know that more people viewed Ronald Reagan’s 2004 funeral (35.1 million) and Princess Diana’s 1997 funeral (33.3 million). Obviously, this isn’t a competition for who had the most funeral viewers, but it was a fierce battle to see which network took the lead. Out of the 18 cable and broadcast networks that aired the special, ABC and CNN tied for having the most viewers, with each channel getting 5.3 million spectators apiece. That’s clearly a lot, and this isn’t even counting the number of people that watched the broadcast on their computers. But in all of this, we’re most impressed with the fact that over in Germany, a quarter of the nation’s population watched the service. Now that is impressive.
