Views of one MSNBC Saddam video = 3 TV ratings points
Steve Safran December 31st, 2006
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.
5 Comments Add your own
1. ak | December 31st, 2006 at 6:03 pm
I wonder how many of those streams came from the home page placement on MSN.com. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was over 2 million….
2. nakedeye | January 1st, 2007 at 11:46 am
….and what if it is? for nbc news, the affect is the same isn”t it?
3. SOKO | January 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am
Does anyone know what the other news sites received for video traffic on Saturday from the Saddam story?
Also… how much of the traffic was people thinking they were actually going to see the execution. As ‘ghoulish’ as it sounds I think that’s what really gets people clicking. There was a similar spike in video views around the death of the Crocodile Hunter this summer. People were clicking knowing there was a camera rolling at the time of his death and were perhaps secretly anticipating seeing that moment online.
4. Evangelos | September 16th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Cool.
5. lucy | January 18th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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