Surge of traffic to NBC websites thanks to Tina Fey, Wall Street & iTunes
By Justin Montgomery
NBC has seen huge numbers of visitors to a few select websites over the past several days thanks to a few key events. The Wall Street troubles prompted a surge for CNBC, while Tina Fey’s uncanny impression of Sen. Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live garnered huge numbers of viewers to NBC.com. The re-introduction of NBC programming to iTunes fueled the surge as well.
The stock market crumble was the biggest boost for NBC overall. Research firm Hitwise found that on Monday, U.S. users spent more time on average on CNBC.com, 18 minutes, than they did on competitors including Yahoo Finance, CBS Marketwatch, WSJ.com and Bloomberg, according to the Hollywood Reporter. CNBC.com, on Monday alone, saw over one million unique visitors for the first time ever, with over 14.6 million page views for the day.
Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live spoof of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday gave NBC.com its most-watched viral video ever, even surpassing totals for the same videos on YouTube. In just four short days from the airing, the video saw some 5.7 million views. NBC has gone to great lengths to keep its content off of sharing-sites like YouTube, so it can share in the ad-revenue generated online.
When it comes to iTunes, about 30% of the top-selling episodes now include shows either airing on or produced by NBC Universal. Users of iTunes seemed to have had no problem finding NBC’s TV shows now that a new deal between the companies on Sept. 9 restored lost episodes. According to Apple, more than 1 million downloads have been tallied since then. Heroes, Saturday Night Live, and The Office remain NBC’s top downloaded programs.
It would be great if NBC could keep up the momentum- they’ll no doubt keep Tina Fey’s spot on Saturday Night Live to keep the record number of viewers happy, and the iTunes deal was a no-brainer. What surprises me is that users seem to have forgotten about larger financial news sites such as Bloomberg, and instead opted for CNBC.
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