Will American Skip Royal Wedding Coverage? New Survey Finds Little Interest

Posted Apr 28, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Apr 28, 2011 at 08:27 AM

  Is the media more excited about the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton than the American public?

A new survey finds a majority of news consumers (78 percent) say they have not been paying much attention to the media build-up to Friday’s wedding. Interest may increase Friday but given the early morning ceremony it’s likely many won’t be saying “I do” to the coverage.

The survey this week by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 64 percent said there has been “too much” coverage of the royal couple and the pending wedding.

Even so the PEJ projects a “sizeable” audience, especially older women. About a third of women 50 and over said they planned to watch.

In a sampling of 1,000 adults, only 8 percent said they were watching the pre-weddng coverage “very closely” with 13 percent watching “fairly closely,” while 25 percent were slightly interested. And 63 percent said they weren’t following the coverage.

However, most people will see at least a replay of the events because television will be saturated with coverage on Friday.