According to Nielsen Media Research, a total of 31.1 million U.S. television viewers watched Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service that aired early Tuesday afternoon from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on broadcast and cable TV. Add to this number the television viewership in other countries around the world in addition to those who watched via online streaming video and many calculations indicate 1 billion people viewed this historic event in some manner.

The Memorial Service aired live on 18 cable and broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, HLN, MTV, VHI, VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, BET, E!, TV Guide Channel, TV One, Univision and Telemundo). Most of the coverage of this lavish event aired live, without commercial interruption, for the two-hour time span.

Viewership reports from across the world also support these high-ranking numbers.

• United Kingdom: more than 6 million people watched the live primetime broadcast (Nielsen)
• Germany: more than 20 million people ¾ roughly one-quarter of the country’s population ¾ watched the live transmission on 10 TV stations (Media Control)
• France: approximately 10 million people watched the Memorial Service or more than a 50 percent share (Mediametrie)

Some Web sites are also reporting records online streaming video viewership records were broken on such as MSNBC.com (19 million streams) and MSN.com (9.7 million). Nielsen Media Research also indicates ABC’s digital network delivered nearly 6 million streams and CNN.com attracted 11.8 million unique users and 9.7 million live video streams. Yahoo!® News generated 5 million streams, FoxNews.com generated 3.4 million streams and MSNBC obtained 7 million unique users - mainly due to their new partnership with Twitter, with which CNN.com and Facebook also partnered.

Prior to the King of Pop’s historic Memorial Service, the largest audience to tune into a memorial or burial service of a world-renowned person was the burial of President Ronald Reagan in 2004 with 35.1 million television viewers. Less than a decade earlier, the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana generated 33.3 million television viewers. But at the time of Princess Diana’s passing, the world also did not have the ability to view the Memorial Service via the Internet.

In comparison to these numbers, television viewership tops the charts with other notable entertainment events such as the Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009 — 98.7 million viewers — and the 81^st Annual Academy Awards — 39.9 million viewers.

But as both television and online viewership numbers continue to be calculated over the coming weeks, Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service could very well be the most viewed entertainment event in history.