Los Angeles, July 09: More than 30 million Americans watched Michael Jackson’s memorial service, according to television ratings released Wednesday, but the whereabouts of his body and plans for his funeral remained shrouded in secrecy.
Ratings agency Nielsen reported that 31 million viewers watched the memorial in the US, compared to 35 million who watched the funeral of former president Ronald Reagan in 2004 and 33.2 million viewers for the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997.
The viewing figures did not include the millions more who folowed the event over the internet.
Jackson’s family held a private memorial for the king of pop at the Forest Lawn cemetery prior to the Staples Centre service, at which Jackson’s casket was placed at center stage. But the family has not said where his body was taken after the tribute, or where it will be buried.
Last week, Jackson’s brother Jermaine said that the family would like to bury him at Michael’s former Neverland estate, but said that the permit process would take too long.
Celebrity website TMZ.com reported Wednesday that the family had given police a list of doctors who may have helped Jackson abuse prescription drugs. Attention is focused on the large amounts of the anesthetic Diprivan in his possession. The drug is meant for use only in an operating theatre environment and can easily induce the kind of cardiac arrest that caused Jackson’s death on June 25 at age 50.
Jackson’s long-time dermatologist insisted Wednesday that he tried to limit his patient’s drug intake and never gave him Diprivan.
“I was not one of the doctors who participated in giving him overdoses of drugs or too much of anything,” Dr Arnold Klein said in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America. “In fact, I was the one who limited everything, who stopped everything.”
“How am I going to prescribe Diprivan when I don’t know how to use it?” said Klein, who added that Jackson had been in good health and spirit the last time Klein saw him, three days before he died.
–Agencies