Saturday's Live Earth concerts were meant to be planet Earth's wake-up call to the irreversible damage that we're doing to the environment, so it's a shame that most of the world hit the snooze button and then went out to play in the sun.

The ratings for the BBC coverage of Live Earth are in, and it's not a pretty sight – towards its climax, just 3.1 million people watched Live Earth, compared to 11.4 million last week for the Princess Diana concert. While it's interesting to see that Live Earth, part of a worldwide campaign to kind of somehow save the world, still isn't as important to the British public as a concert about a posh bulimic chick who's been dead for a decade, one recurring reason for Live Earth's dismal ratings seems to be public fatigue over all-star charity concerts held at Wembley and broadcast on BBC1. And that more or less spells disaster for this Saturday's televised charity Wembley concert to raise awareness about enlarged ferret spleens headlined by Richard Blackwood.

When Al Gore first announced Live Earth, he must have imagined all the families in the world huddled around their televisions watching the biggest stars of the day preach important messages about the dangers of man's contribution to climate change. Sadly, though, in reality Saturday's Live Earth concert was watched by about half the amount of people who routinely watch Celebrity Masterchef. And fair's fair – which would you rather watch, Paulo Nutini singing a song or a fat bald man in glasses shouting about trifle? Thought so.

Despite all that it had going for it – like Madonna's headline set and Spinal Tap reforming and Ricky Gervais only talking for 30 seconds instead of awkwardly melting into a pool of sweat for ten minutes – the British Live Earth ratings only peaked at 3.1 million and were dwarfed by last week's Princess Diana concert, as The Sun reports:

BBC One's average ratings between 8pm and 10pm on Saturday were a paltry 3.1 million, compared with a massive 11.4 million for the Diana gig on the previous Sunday. Performers, such as Madonna, Snow Patrol and Kasabian, failed to match the huge ratings achieved the previous week by stars like P Diddy and Joss Stone, who performed at the Concert for Diana. The BBC defended the poor viewing figures, saying the ratings were "good" for "a Saturday night in July".

Now we honestly can't understand why the Princess Diana concert was so much more popular in the ratings than Live Earth. Just a few weeks ago the Diana concert was struggling to find acts because all the really famous people wanted to play Live Earth instead, which suggested that Live Earth was always going to be the bigger show. But here are our theories about why the Princess Diana concert trounced Live Earth so heavily in the ratings:

1 - Complexity of message. It's difficult for Live Earth to address what it's about without a) boiling the point down to "Save the world" and patronising everyone or b) urging the public to sign a confusingly-worded pledge that doesn't make all that much sense to the average man on the street. Meanwhile, the message of the Princess Diana concert was "Awww, what a nice dead lady," which is slightly easier to understand.

2 - Events. Live Earth had to compete with the London opening of the Tour De France, the closing stages of Wimbledon, the announcement of the new Seven Wonders Of The World and Eva Longoria's wedding on the first sunny Saturday in months. Meanwhile, the Princess Diana concert came after a bunch of deranged Al Qaeda doctors tried to blow up the country again, leaving everyone too frightened to leave their houses. Plus it was raining.

3 - Execution. Trying to raise awareness of climate change by hosting a series of energy-barfing concerts that pumped out more carbon in a day than your TV would if left on standby for over a million years is a little bit silly. Thanks to the Princess Diana concert not inviting the children of the Chicken Shed Theatre Choir to physically shit all over a giant picture of Princess Diana's face while singing I Am In Love With The World in front of an appalled nation, the Diana concert probably wins on execution too.

4 - Princess Diana was the Queen of our hearts. When was the last time the Ozone Layer held a leper's hand, huh? Or had sex with a bum-faced rugby player? Huh?

But still, despite all this, we can't quite believe that the ratings for the Princess Diana concert were better than the ratings for Live Earth, for one reason and one reason only – there was a medley of sodding Andrew Lloyd Webber songs in the middle of the Diana concert. Who'd honestly want to watch that?

Anyway, hopefully the dismal global ratings for Live Earth – in America more people watched a repeat of Monsters Inc than Live Earth – have taught the world the most important message they could possibly teach – never let Madonna write songs for charity concerts. Ever. 

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