• January 22, 2007

The MediaDailyNews article entitled "Networks Battling For Web Traffic On TV Sites, ABC Leads The Pack" on Jan. 18 cites Nielsen//NetRatings data about traffic levels to television network Web sites, based on the number of unique users visiting the sites of the four major broadcast networks.

Specifically, it refers to destinations (URLs) on sites such as NBC.com and ABC.com that offer full-episode streaming video of shows. The article should have noted that data about unique users to those URLs is not necessarily a fair indicator of how much actual video streaming occurs, or what shows are viewed at the URLs, since a visitor may choose not to view a stream.

In addition, the article cited unique-user data for the NBC.com URL--nbc.com/video/rewind--but that may not be a fair representation of how many streams are taking place throughout the NBC.com site, as visitors could access streams via multiple URLs. The same goes for other URLs mentioned for other network Web sites. A site such as ABC.com could also have multiple access points to its video streaming.