Mega-Monday Ratings for Meghan and Harry

Three will repeat its Harry and Meghan special on Saturday night following last night’s historically high ratings for the network.

CBS Presents Oprah With Meghan and Harry will air at 9.15, instead of the previously scheduled movie Second Act.

Three reports the Monday broadcast delivered the channel the highest ratings in 26 years.

Reads the media release:

Almost a million people tuned in for the highly anticipated CBS Presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry on Three, delivering the highest share on the network in more than two decades.

259,700 viewers on average in the commercially important 25-54 demographic tuned in across the country for the live two-hour special, making this the most watched programme on Three since 1995. The broadcast reached 935,100 individuals across the country. [Reach refers to the total 5+ audience of a programme based on having watched at least a minute of the broadcast.]

CBS Presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry delivered phenomenal results for streaming service ThreeNow, with the highest number of live streams on the platform since its launch.

Three won the night across all networks with the Three special Newshub Presents Meghan and Harry After The Interview, which followed CBS Presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry, bringing in 116,852 (25-54) viewers.

This was despite massive media coverage of the interview in the 36 hours preceding its belated premiere on Three.

In the UK, it averaged 11.3 million viewers on ITV, to become the most watched show of the year.

“At its peak, the CBS sit-down — which sparked a bidding war in the U.K., as revealed by Variety — had 12.3 million tuned in to the broadcaster,” Variety says.

This was ITV’s biggest peak audience since the 2019 Rugby World Cup final and the biggest on any channel, outside of government and pandemic-related announcements, since the Strictly Come Dancing final on BBC One in December 2020.

The interview also drew the biggest 16-34 age group TV audience for overnight viewing, outside of news programming, since ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Herelast year.

Some 2.2 million viewers streamed the interview on ITV Hub.

To put these numbers in historical context, the 1995 BBC Panorama interview of Princess Diana by Martin Bashir drew an audience of 22.8 million, though the media market was far less fragmented than it is now.

And in Australia, where the interview aired on Monday night, MediaWeek reports it rewarded Channel 10 with a “record night“, with 1.36 million viewers.

“This was the highest rating programme of 2021 so far, with the special interview also dominating all key demos.”