11 July 2007The Age
THE global Live Earth pop extravaganza fell flat for television viewers in the United States and Britain, drawing far smaller audiences than the Princess Diana tribute concert a week earlier.
The main three-hour American TV broadcast on NBC averaged a meagre 2.7 million viewers, ranking as the least-watched US program on Saturday night, and falling below NBC's summer prime-time Saturday average, Nielsen Media Research reported on Monday.
Even the rival ABC's rerun of the animated Monsters Inc had a bigger audience — 3.3 million.
NBC averaged 8.8 million viewers with its hour-long broadcast of the memorial concert for Diana the previous Sunday.
It was the same story in Britain, where BBC1's coverage of the Live Earth climax at London's Wembley Stadium, leading up to Madonna's eagerly awaited finale, averaged 3.1 million viewers, compared with 11.4 million for the Princess Diana tribute.
In Germany, the ProSieben network registered 1 million viewers for its Live Earth telecast, a relatively healthy 6.3 per cent market share.
The overall numbers amounted to a fraction of the 2 billion people that Live Earth organisers had hoped to reach through TV, radio and internet coverage of the event, spearheaded by the former US vice-president, Al Gore, to raise awareness of global warming.
It appeared the internet was the medium of choice for many. Microsoft's web portal, MSN, said on Saturday that Live Earth concerts generated more than 9 million internet streams, the most ever for an online entertainment event.
That number surpassed the previous record held by 2005's Live 8 concerts to fight global poverty, MSN said.
