In a way, today is a big day for Hulu. The popular video site will soon likely attract a huge number of views based on two shows that return to television this evening – NBC’s The Office and FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These two have been huge hits for Hulu in the past, and that will likely continue as the two programs begin pushing out new episodes.
The series premiere of The Office will make its Hulu debut on Friday September 18th, but It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans will unfortunately have to wait until Friday September 25th to catch the premiere of the show’s fifth season on the site. Once it makes its appearance, however, I would expect plenty of views (and ad views).
Web searchers are obviously awaiting both of these shows, as they both appear in Google’s Hot Trends list at the time of this writing. “Sunny” is at number 24, surprisingly way ahead of The Office, which is at 93.
Way up at number 8, however, is “thursday night football schedule,” indicating what people really want to watch tonight. The only game on tonight is Georgia Tech vs. Miami on ESPN (and on the web at ESPN360.com), but I would expect it to get pretty good ratings, if the amount of web interest in football is any indication.
Last month, football-related sites saw some of the biggest gains in web traffic, as shown by the Compete 250. NFL.com ranked among the month’s biggest gainers, growing 123% and reaching 6.5 million unique visitors, while individual team sites saw tremendous uptick, and fantasy football sites attracted 43.8% more traffic than in July.
