When a single video can pull in actual equivalents to ratings points, you know people will take notice. Such is the case with Richard Engel’s Saturday “Today Show” piece on the Saddam execution. According to a MSNBC source, it was streamed a remarkable 2.9 million times on MSNBC.com. That’s for one video, on a Saturday, during a holiday weekend. Wrote our source: “That’s more than an average day’s TOTAL streams and adds about 3 TV rating points (worth) of viewers.” The overall Saddam numbers on MSNBC.com: 9 million streams on Saturday. Friday saw three million streams, with all of the site’s top five videos covering the execution. Pageviews on Saturday were about double a normal Saturday.
December 31st, 2006
It was only a matter of time. There is now video on YouTube, Revver and other sites, purportedly of Saddam’s execution in full. It is believable. The person who shot it on a cellphone is standing below the gallows, so you clearly see Saddam dropping and then hanging. Arab television stations are showing this in full. The American stations I have seen (as well as the BBC) showing it stop it just before the hanging. I am linking to it, because I believe it is important people have the choice of deciding for themselves. I’m not embedding it here. You may disagree with this choice, and I respect that. But the truth is that, once the video is out there, everyone will find it. And that’s the point of the internet in 2007: people shoot the news with their own tools, find their own information, and our jobs are changed now to facilitate the conversation of news.
December 31st, 2006
