Damning royal interview attracts 1.78m Australian viewers

Meghan and Harry’s tell-all was watched by more than 1.78 million viewers around Australia. The audience in the US was gargantuan.

Meghan and Harry’s bombshell interview about the Royal family was the most watched television program in Australia. Picture: Screengrab

Meghan and Harry’s bombshell interview about the Royal family was the most watched television program in Australia on Monday night, attracting a national audience of 1.78m.

The much hyped two-hour interview with American chat host queen Oprah Winfrey was broadcast on free-to-air television Network Ten on Monday night following its airing for the first time on its sister TV network CBS in the US several hours earlier.

The interview on CBS was extensively covered by local and international media ahead of its broadcast on Ten and dominated social media. It was broadcast in the UK on commercial broadcaster ITV on Tuesday morning Sydney time.

In the US, about 17.1 million people watched on CBS, making it one of the most-watched events of the TV season but still well behind the Super Bowl.

The US audience, which is based on preliminary Nielsen data, will likely grow when final numbers come with delayed and online viewing added to the mix. The interview, though easily one of the most popular events on television this season, trailed the Super Bowl in viewership which attracted over 90 million on CBS last month.

The Wall Street Journal reports far fewer people watched Sunday’s program than previous much-anticipated interviews. Some 70 million watched Barbara Walters interview Monica Lewinsky in 1999.

In the interview, the Duchess of Sussex revealed she wanted to kill herself when she was pregnant and alleged members of the royal family were racist but didn’t name them.

The actress said she was denied help and alleged that there was official concern about the skin colour of her unborn son, Archie, and a conspiracy to deny him a title because he was of mixed race.

After the interview, Winfrey revealed that Harry stressed to her that the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh, who is in hospital following surgery, weren’t behind comments about Archie’s skin colour.

The Royal family hasn’t responded to the allegations.

The explosive interview, which attracted a near 1.37 viewers across Australia’s five capital cities, easily out-rated Seven and Nine’s evening news programs, which also extensively covered the Sussexes’ explosive claims.

Ten, which is owned by US media giant ViacomCBS, said Tuesday that the interview was its biggest special since 2011, coincidentally part two of Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure.

The 1.78m national audience is less than half of last year’s AFL grand final, which boasted more than 3.8m viewers around the country. Richmond’s win against Geelong last October was the most popular TV program in Australia last year, and the highest rating grand final in four years.

But it also broke its non-sport live stream audience record on its broadcast video-on-demand platform 10 Play with 71,000-plus viewers.