There is no doubt that the English know how to throw a wedding, the recent coverage of the most eloquent and truly the most beautiful royal wedding, or as many media outlets titled it as “the wedding of the century,” was the most arguably covered wedding. American people complained that the media flooded the news outlets with nonsense information about the wedding and most of them expressed on how much they did not care about it, and they had good reason to. Yet, the news stations would argue that the statistics of viewership and mentions on social media show a different report, since pretty much that is all they care about in the end.
According to neilsen.com the total number of American’s who watched the wedding was an estimated 22,766,469 million people. Yet, in a recent poll done by the New York Times and CBS News only 6 percent of Americans, have been following news about the wedding very closely and only 22 percent are following the wedding somewhat closely. There was a disclaimer in the poll and well they are not always accurate but 6 percent, which is definitely not a lot of people caring about the wedding.
The weddings coverage was done by 11 networks according to neilson.com; this is eight more stations that covered the wedding compared to Prince Charles and Camila Parker Bowles. It is doubt that 11 stations really needed to cover the wedding, since the wedding was constantly shown throughout the day, wasn’t there other news that needed to be covered?
The wedding was broadcast in American early in the morning while a lot of people were asleep. Many decided to sleep in and watch it later on their recording devices, which was a good decision. Therefore, there was no need to have a five to six hour segment on the wedding, since most of it was the commentators speaking about Kate Middleton. It was hard to turn on the television or go on the internet on the day of the wedding without hearing about it. Facebook and Twitter had constant feeds mentioning the wedding in some way. The day of the wedding, Twitter and Facebook showed record numbers of people using social media to talk about the weeding, yet www.whatthetrend.com list the royal wedding at number seven on the week ending April 29. The wedding did not even make it to the top five, funny to mention that it did not even beat out Justin Bieber fans who trended the teen pop about the wedding.
The main question to ask is why American news stations were giving so much attention to the wedding of two people? It seems that in order to justify the coverage news stations titled it “the wedding of the century.” It was pretty sad how much it was mentioned in the news outlets day in and day out, for the past months since their engagement, when it really was not breaking news.
CNN reported that they had an average of 1.66 million viewers the morning of the wedding, stating that it has been the biggest audience since the 2008 president election.
News stations would argue that if they were the only ones not showing what the people want to see they would lose out in the ratings, but aren’t news station supposed to be showing the news, such as, the earthquake in Japan, and the tornado destroying the airport in Saint Louis, Missouri? I understand that we live in America and the society is infatuated with celebrity news because that is what people want to see, but there should be a line or a limit to entertainment television compared to news. Maybe if people paid more attention to what is going on out there in real life they would car more and actually put time in to make a change; instead of just complaining about it on social media outlet.
News stations would argue that if they were the only ones not showing what the people want to see they would lose out in the ratings, but aren’t news station supposed to be showing the news, such as, the earthquake in Japan, and the tornado destroying the airport in Saint Louis, Missouri? I understand that we live in America and the society is infatuated with celebrity news because that is what people want to see, but there should be a line or a limit to entertainment television compared to news. Maybe if people paid more attention to what is going on out there in real life they would car more and actually put time in to make a change; instead of just complaining about it on social media outlet.
It boggles the mind on how the news media outlets thought that Americans really cared about the wedding. In the same New York Times poll it said that 4 out 10 women above the age of 40 were interested in watching the wedding and men pretty much did not care. Sadly to say is that these facts show that not only do women still dream about the fairy tale wedding, which the royals put on, but cared to see a wedding which was not their own or of anyone they knew. Many of these women it would be safe to say, were around during the time that Princess Diana was married to Prince Charles. Also something to add is that she has remains the most popular royal to date according to the New York Times, and that fans of the royal family still remember Princess Diana fondly and wanted to see her oldest son marry.
Many American’s breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over, and mostly likely even cheered two days later, actually they did cheer, when the whole country shifted its news coverage to the death of Osama Bin Landen. Now there is a whole different kind of news that is flooding the news stations and it does not have to do with designers, guest list and “the kiss.” Now it seems that viewers do not have to go through something like this again because it was the “wedding of the century.”
Photos were taken from Google.com
