The recent winter storms across the Midwest and Northeast have driven record traffic to Internet Broadcasting’s network of more than 70 TV station Web sites. According to WebTrends On Demand traffic reached its peak on February 13, with more than 35 million pageviews surpassing the previous record set on August 29,2005 when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast.
The majority of Internet Broadcasting sites such as WBALTV.com in Baltimore, TheBostonChannel.com and WLWT.com in Cincinnati carried “Special Edition” online storm coverage. The coverage included advisories, watches and severe weather warnings along with school closings, delays and dismissals.
Sites such as Hartford’s WFSB.com had live video streams of their on-air coverage, providing viewers with real time updates on the changing weather conditions.
Data from WebTrends indicates that Internet Broadcasting’s weather sections experienced a five-fold increase over normal daily levels, receiving 12.5 of the days 35 million pageviews.
Also twice as many video streams were viewed compared to daily averages. Many sites had large traffic increases for slideshows of user generated weather pictures, setting their own daily traffic records.
“When breaking news or weather affects people’s daily lives, America turns to their trusted local news source,” said Julie Burrows, EVP of marketing, research and product development, Internet Broadcasting. “Our record traffic is a testament to the strength of our TV partner brands, as well as Internet Broadcasting’s 10-year history of delivering online breaking news, weather alerts, school closures and traffic information.”
Traffic numbers represent an aggregation across Internet Broadcasting’s entire national network of TV station Web sites.
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