• by June 11, 2004

Today is an official day of mourning for the nation's 40th president. The markets may be closed, but the airwaves are loaded with commentary, tributes, interviews and live coverage.

So is the Web.

In fact, since the news of Ronald Reagan's death broke on June 5, the Web has gone at full tilt delivering interactive timelines, slide shows, streaming video clips, news and other content related to the life of the former president. Message boards and blogs have also been active.

A few factoids: Searches on Yahoo! related to the former president increased 5,314 percent last Saturday. Sites including CNN.com, Yahoo! News, MSNBC.com, NYTimes.com and the Drudge Report enjoyed triple-digit percentage traffic increases on June 6 versus the prior week, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABCNews.com reports that on June 5, it served nearly 10 times the number of video streams compared to the prior Saturday which, granted, was a holiday weekend. ABC's video content (including its live channel, ABC News Live) is available to its stand-alone subscribers to ABC News On Demand, as well as RealNetworks' SuperPass and America Online subscribers and SBC/Yahoo! and BellSouth's FastAccess customers.

ABCNews.com estimates nearly 13 million pageviews to its Reagan-related content. Rewinding back to June 5-June 9, 2003, the news organization's top 100 pages logged a total of about 11 million pageviews. Comparing the passing of former President Reagan to coverage of the Martha Stewart verdict and related content, ABCNews.com said it logged about 14 million pageviews from the day of the verdict, Friday, March 5 to Tuesday, March 9.

"The Internet gives you the flexibility to cover simultaneously numerous stories," Bernie Gershon, SVP/GM, ABC News Digital Media Group, commented in an email from China yesterday. "If a user wanted to watch continuous coverage of a live feed from the Rotunda today [Thursday], we gave them that option. And throughout the day we gave them the option of following developments in Iraq, details on the death of Ray Charles, and news from the G-8 Summit in Georgia."

Simultaneous coverage, indeed.