8th March, 2021
Agency Report
Some 17.1 million Americans watched Oprah Winfrey’s bombshell television interview with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, broadcaster CBS said on Monday.
CBS said Sunday’s two-hour interview drew the biggest audience for any entertainment special since the Oscars telecast in February 2020, watched by 23.6 million viewers.
It was also the most-watched non Super Bowl event on a Sunday in prime time in over a year, CBS said. The National Football League’s Super Bowl regularly draws an audience of around 100 million and is the highest-rated TV event in the United States.
Sunday’s interview was the first given by the couple since they stepped back from the British royal family a year ago.
Harry and Meghan accused the royal family of racism and of failing to protect them from negative media coverage,
Meghan spoke of feeling suicidal while Harry said his father, Prince Charles, had let him down.
The interview will be broadcast in Britain on Monday night. Buckingham Palace has yet to comment on their remarks.
The interview dominated the conversation on social media, morning television shows and newspaper front pages on Monday in Britain and abroad.
The hashtag #HarryandMeghanonOprah was among the top five trending items worldwide on Twitter during and after the broadcast, while #Abolishthemonarchy was also buzzing, with 11,200 tweets.
The couple’s interview covered not just their tensions with the royal family but also Harry’s disgust at the conduct of the British press, particularly the tabloids.
Much of the coverage centred on the dramatic moment when Meghan said her son Archie, who will be two in May, had been denied the title of prince because there were concerns within the royal family “about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”.