374,000 Swiss watched royal wedding live
The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton on Friday was watched live by 374,000 people on Swiss television, a spokesman for Swiss-German broadcaster SF said on Monday.
SF cleared its schedule for the wedding between 10am and 3pm, achieving an audience share of 302,000 – around 40 per cent – good for that time of day, according to spokesman Marco Meroni.
Some 72,000 viewers – 22.3 per cent – watched the wedding on French-language television station TSR, while a further 137,000 Swiss-French also watched the wedding on French television stations, which offered different viewing hours, a spokeswoman for TSR said.
SF’s Tagesschau news programme at 7.30pm on Friday was watched by 766,000 people, an audience share of 57 per cent. The Swiss population is 7.8 million.
Swiss viewers were more interested in seeing the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they are now known, tie the knot than their Swedish counterparts. When Princess Victoria married her fitness instructor last June, only 269,000 viewers tuned in.
A viewing record for Switzerland was set in 2008 when Spain beat Germany in the final of the European football championships, co-hosted by Switzerland. 1.69 million viewers watched the match, an audience share of 67.5 per cent.
The wedding was viewed on television by just under half the British population at around 24 million, with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reporting around half a million watching the stream on its website.
More Britons watched the 1966 World Cup Final (32.3 million) and Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 (32.1 million). The wedding of William’s parents in 1981 attracted 28.4 million viewers.
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