Nielsen: 31 million U.S. viewers watched Jackson memorial

Tuesday's lavish Michael Jackson memorial was seen by 31.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Though a staggering audience for a midweek morning after the Fourth of July holiday, the number falls shy of the linear viewership for the burial of Ronald Reagan (35.1 million) in 2004 and the funeral of Princess Diana (33.3 million) in 1997.

It's a larger number of viewers than watched Reagan's funeral (20.8 million) or the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II (8.8 million), however.

A stunning 18 cable and broadcast networks carried the three-hour telecast, ranging from news outlets to entertainment channels such as MTV and E!

Millions of additional viewers watched online and overseas. Given the steep increase in Internet viewing each year, it's likely that more U.S. viewers watched Jackson's memorial overall than Reagan or Diana if all forms of viewing were tallied.

For instance, both MSNBC.com (19 million streams) and MSN.com (9.7 million) broke their all-time streaming video records with Tuesday's event. ABC's digital network delivered nearly 6 million streams. 

Memorial organizer AEG Live told the Los Angeles Times that they expect 1 billion people watched worldwide, but the BBC estimated 2.5 billion worldwide for Diana.

Some: Network-by-network viewership. Looks like ABC and CNN essentially tied for the top spot:

ABC: 5.3 million
CNN: 5.3
NBC: 5.1
CBS: 3.9
Fox News: 2.2
MSNBC: 1.4

In the U.K., more than 6 million people watched the live primetime broadcasts of the service.

The memorial was screened live on BBC 2, which attracted an average of 4 million viewers and a 19% audience share, according to unofficial overnight figures. The audience peaked at 5.2 million toward the end of the service at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Channel Five's coverage had an audience of 1.2 million and a 5% share between 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the U.K. And Sky News had an average audience of 897,000 for its coverage.

In Germany, more than 20 million people -- almost a quarter of the country's population of 83 million -- saw the live transmission as well as other reports about the funeral on more than 10 TV stations, according to market research company Media Control.

On the main national terrestrial channels in France, about 10 million people watched coverage of the memorial, more than a 50% audience share, according to audience measurement company Mediametrie.

With additional reporting by Billboard's Andre Paine in London.

Note: Nielsen issued a correction to its original announced viewership and network tally for the Jackson memorial; this post was updated to reflect their new numbers.