• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 1, 2009

Despite Perez Hilton's fading star, the entertainment news and gossip trade is booming online. According to comScore, nearly 55 million U.S. consumers visited an entertainment news site in May 2009, representing a 7% increase year-over-year.

Online video, in particular, has emerged as an increasingly important channel for content in the entertainment category, with the number of videos viewed growing 53% in the past year.

"With more than one out of every four U.S Internet users visiting an entertainment news site each month, it's clear that following entertainment and celebrity culture has become a popular online pastime," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president.

Yahoo's celebrity gossip site omg! led the category with 20.6 million visitors -- nearly doubling its audience in the past year.

TMZ captured the Number 2 ranking with 9.9 million visitors -- up 7% versus a year ago -- followed by People -- which actually saw a 10% drop in traffic, with 8.2 million visitors.

Significant gains were experienced by USmagazine.com, up 325% to 6.5 million visitors, Entertainment Weekly, up 64% to nearly 4 million visitors, and The Insider, which grew 215% to 2.5 million visitors.

"May was one of the heaviest months on record for entertainment news consumption, but it will almost certainly be surpassed in June with the shocking news of Michael Jackson's death driving high volumes of traffic to these sites," said Flanagan. "While most entertainment news sites will see gains in June, TMZ is primed for an especially big month as the first outlet to report the news, which generated thousands of inbound links to the site."

Traffic to PerezHilton.com, meanwhile, dropped 2% from 2.5 million to 2.4 million visitors. Online Media Daily recently broke the news that Hilton -- aka Mario Lavandeira -- plans to launch a kinder, gentler and more advertiser-friendly site in the next couple of months.

Overall, U.S. consumers spent over 893 million minutes -- or approximately 15 million hours -- on entertainment news sites, with 44% of the total time spent in the category occurring at work.

"What's also interesting," noted Flanagan, "is that Americans are feeding their hunger for celebrity gossip by 'snacking' on these news updates throughout the workday." Nearly half of all time spent on entertainment news sites comes from "work computers."