WWLtv.com traffic already skyrocketing

Even before Hurricane Gustav became a hurricane, WWLtv.com began streaming two “live chats” a day with their meteorologists. They take reader questions and then illustrate the answers in a live video stream, drawing on weather maps. “The live chats have been getting between 3,000 to 6,000 simultaneous views,” explains WWLtv.com’s Tom Planchet on Friday afternoon, noting they’re also streaming so many press conferences, sometimes there are two at a time. “Our video traffic has gone up 10 times so far per day,” he said. Planchet has been through this before: during Katrina, he kept up a rapid-fire breaking news blog and streamed WWL-TV’s live signal — the only live news coverage of the story for thousands of people.