Royal Wedding Fever

Royal Wedding Fever

It’s estimated that 24-million viewers watched the live coverage of the Royal Wedding.  In the UK during the ceremony, Facebook was updated 74 times per second, while the event was mentioned on twitter 67 times per second.  It is acknowledged as the sixth-biggest web event in history (Dailymail, 2011).

I don’t know about the rest of you, but last month I had a great time remembering London and the UK just by watching the Royal Wedding.

Friday, April 29.  I watched people gathered on the street near Westminster Abbey on the newsfeed Associated Press Television News (APTN).  I could recall the smell of London, the mild 18-degree weather, and the exquisiteness of the city.

8.500 journalists from NBC, CBS, Al-Jazeera and others were gathered in London to cover the event. The BBC was the lead broadcaster for the Royal Wedding, spending nearly £2m while utilizing 850 staff.

CNN sent 400 staff, including 50 journalists and producers.  ITV used 300 staff members to successfully capture the atmosphere prior to the ceremony, while Sky News employed 160 staff (Buchanan, 2011).

It was amazing to watch the entire ceremony covered by BBC’s multi-camera positions, which were all very well-placed and well-hidden (so we can’t see any of them, even in the wide shot). There were 40 cameras inside Westminster Abbey, including one that was hung high above the altar to shoot the moment when the vows were spoken.

In Indonesia, Metro TV, the country’s pioneer news channel, aired the Royal Wedding live. We had three journalists reporting from Westminster Abbey, outside the church in the crowd, and at Buckingham Palace. In our studio, we invited relevant guests to provide commentary and explain the details of the ceremony.

My co-anchor Marissa Anita and I welcomed three guests -Ann Lees, a British resident in Jakarta; Warwick Purser, a distant relative of the Royal Family; and Desi Anwar, Metro TV’s senior journalist, who had lived in London for 16 years.  We were all extremely thrilled watching the entire event, even though we were 11,713 kilometers away.  The excitement of the moment enveloped us.

Minute-by-minute, watching, describing, and commenting on the details of the wedding made me realize that this wedding had invited the whole world to London to share William and Kate’s happiness.

What We Learned from the Event

It seemed to me that every single human being had been exposed to the smallest detail of the Royal Wedding.  The Royals publicized themselves using every modern technology and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  Yet at the same time, we still saw the traditional ways of the Royals.  Things such as Kate’s wedding dress, her tiara and the ring were kept secrets until they finally revealed.  The conservative ways of the Royal Family were also felt in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I found it extremely difficult to find a reliable source willing to talk about the event.  No one from official organizations associated with the UK government, including the Indonesia bureau of state broadcaster BBC, was allowed to talk to the media about the Royal Family.

Some Indonesians might perceive the Royal Family as “bad people” based on their position and actions following Princess Diana’s death.  But I found that most British people, especially those who living in Indonesia, really have tremendous love for their Queen.  They still regard her with the highest esteem, and respect and adore her dedication to the country despite her advanced age.

To British nationals, this wedding was not a question of whether Kate will end up like Diana, but was more like a new opportunity to improve the image of the Royal Family.

A survey by the YouGov/Cambridge University confirmed that 70% of British people believe that this marriage would have a constructive impact on how people perceive the Royals (Sky News, 2011).

This wedding had also become an oasis in a desert.  Many analysts said that after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, violence in the Middle East and the global economic crisis of the last couple of years, people were hungry for a happy story.

The morning after the event, every newspaper in Indonesia put a huge photo of Prince William and Princess Catherine on their front pages.

At least we could say that for a few days, the world was a happy place because of Royal Wedding fever.  Then came Monday, and the news that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been shot dead.