Memorial service a national viewing experience, in gatherings both online and in person

Jackson service a national viewing experience

NEW YORK — A giant audience formed for Michael Jackson’s memorial service, as millions gathered in public, in front of televisions and at computer screens to experience the mourning of the celebrated pop star.

Chants of “Michael! Michael!” rang out in Harlem, where about 1,000 gathered to watch the memorial service on a giant screen live from Los Angeles’ Staples Center.

A steady stream of fans — wearing Jackson T-shirts and listening to hits like “Billie Jean” — visited the singer’s boyhood home in Gary, Ind.

“I felt like I needed to pay homage to ‘the greatest,’” said 49-year-old, retired chemical operator Jackie Ford, who used to do Jackson’s moonwalk and drove to Gary from Aberdeen, Miss.

The media-saturated event was expected to rival the online audience of even President Barack Obama’s January inauguration — which similarly was a daytime event witnessed by many on their computers at work.

Aside from the wall-to-wall coverage by the TV networks and cable news channels, the memorial service was streamed online by many news outlets and Web sites, including Hulu.com, MySpace.com and The New York Times’ Web site. The Associated Press’ online video network also offered a live broadcast.

Several outlets rolled out interactive features previously used for Obama’s inauguration. CNN.com integrated its live video with chatter from Facebook.

“This has a shot to be one of the biggest lives events we’ve hoisted up,” said Kenneth “KC” Estenson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. “It’s tracking to be pretty big.”

Estenson noted, though, that live video on the Web is still in the nascent stage. A huge swell of traffic — and the heavy bandwidth of video — can cause troubles across the Web.

“Live video on the Web is still a dicey proposition any way you cut it,” said Estenson. “We’ve built out the infrastructure to be able to handle a very large event.”

Alan Wurtzel, chief of research at NBC Universal, called it “the first multi-platform significant culture event.”

“This is definitely going to be the first worldwide event where there is going to be a significant amount of multi-platform viewing,” said Wurtzel. “But I don’t have a clue how many people are going to watch it.”

Not all the coverage was virtual.

Cinedigm Digital Cinema Network carried the memorial service on its live digital network in more than 80 movie theaters nationwide.

Crowds watched the broadcast in New York’s Times Square and in Harlem near the Apollo Theater, where the Jackson 5 won “Amateur Night” in 1967. Jackson impersonator Moses Harper, teary-eyed at the sight of the singer’s casket, danced Jackson’s version of “Ease on Down the Road,” from the musical “The Wiz.”

“I’m just grateful that I got to live in his time,” said Harper.

In Detroit, where his career was launched with Motown Records, hundreds of people filled into the auditorium at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where the memorial service was to be shown on a giant screen.

“I think he was somebody who really did change the style of music,” said Jonathan Contreras, a 23-year-old college student from Westland, Mich. “They call him the King of Pop. I call him the King of Music.”

Outside the White House in Washington, Rocky Twyman, a community activist, asked tourists to sign a “book of condolences” for Jackson’s family.

“We consider him a national hero,” said Twyman. “We want people to remember the good things he did.”

A total of 8,750 people out of 1.6 million registrants were chosen to receive two tickets each to the memorial service in downtown Los Angeles. Participants included Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant, Jennifer Hudson and many more.

The 50-year-old singer’s June 25 death brought an outpouring of grief and remembrance from fans across the globe.

The reaction was especially considerable online, where many people first read the news. The avalanche of traffic temporarily brought Twitter, Wikipedia and AOL’s instant messaging service to a crawl.

Jackson generated the most tweets per second since Obama was elected president in November. Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which monitors global news consumption online, found that Web traffic to news sites increased by about 50 percent.

Traffic flowed to YouTube, where many celebrated Jackson by watching his iconic music videos. Last week, Internet video research firm Visible Measures said Jackson’s 14-minute, 1983 video “Thriller” had been watched more than 8.5 million times online since his death.

At the same time, others have grown tired of the continual coverage of Jackson’s death, believing it has overshadowed more important news and that Jackson — who was tried and acquitted of sexually abusing a child in 2005 — doesn’t deserve such attention.

A Pew Research Center poll published last week found that 64 percent of those surveyed said Jackson’s death has received too much coverage. New York Rep. Peter King also released a YouTube video calling Jackson, who was acquitted of child molestation charges, a “pervert” and a “lowlife.”

While many celebrated Jackson’s life Tuesday, others shrugged off the spectacle. In Baltimore, a simulcast of Jackson’s funeral at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, drew only about 10 people. Much of the normal crowd went about their business checking out books without seeming to notice the screen showing the memorial service.

Associated Press writers Ben Greene in Baltimore, Jim Irwin in Detroit, Jennifer Peltz in New York, Caryn Rousseau in Gary, Ind., and Nafeesa Syeed in Washington and Television Writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.