American Anglophiles and royal watchers had their fingers crossed that they would be able to watch the second royal wedding of the year live on television next week, and their wish is coming true because TLC has decided to carry Princess Eugenie’s wedding live beginning in the early hours of October 12.
Town & Country says that TLC got the message that 30 million Americans watched Meghan Markle and Prince Harry tie the knot, and even if the network gets just a fraction of that number, it’s still pretty good viewership for 4 a.m. on a Friday. ITV will be carrying the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in the U.K., and now it will also be streamed live in America (nearly twice as many people in the U.S. watched Meghan Markle’s royal wedding in America as did in the United Kingdom).
TLC released a statement today to let people know when to tune in next week.
“[TLC’s] broadcast, called Royal Wedding Live: Princess Eugenie, will begin at 4:25 a.m. EST on Friday, October 12, and the cable network will air an encore of the broadcast starting at 7:25 a.m. ET.”
People can also stream the royal wedding on the TLC Go app online.
In the U.K., BBC turned down the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank so ITV was able to nab it unchallenged.
“[BBC] turned [Eugenie’s wedding] down because they don’t think enough people will tune in and that there isn’t enough support for the Yorks. The feeling at the Palace is that the BBC has dropped the ball. At the end of the day, this is going to be a huge Royal Wedding, with all the senior members of the Royal Family in attendance. But nobody wants to take the risk and spend the money it would cost to put it on air.”
Royal correspondent Omid Scobie said that in the past, weddings of “minor royals” weren’t televised, but it was hard to ignore the viewership of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s wedding.
“Looking back at some of the smaller royal weddings, they don’t normally get televised; however, there is a lot of interest in Eugenie’s wedding. I think the fact that we had billions of people watching Harry and Meghan’s wedding this time around showed just how much interested there will be.”
In fact, with the advanced ages of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, it could be the last time at such a public event that the two are photographed in public.
