A recent comScore report says that nearly 55 million Americans visited an entertainment news site in May 2009, representing a 7% increase versus the previous year. Online video has also become
an increasingly important channel for content in the category, with the number of videos viewed growing 53% in the past year. In total, Americans spent more than 893 million minutes,
approximately 15 million hours, on entertainment news sites, with 44% of the total time spent in the category occurring at work.
Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president, said "...
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."
advertisement advertisement Time Spent in Entertainment News Category (May 2009
Total U.S. Home/Work/University Locations) |
| Entertainment -
News |
| All Locations | Home | Work |
Total Minutes (MM) | 893 | 502 | 391 |
Share of Minutes | 100.0% | 56.2% | 43.8% |
Source: comScore Media Metrix, July 2009 |
With more than one-quarter of U.S. Internet users
visiting an entertainment news site in May 2009, omg!, Yahoo!'s celebrity gossip site, led the category with 20.6 million visitors, nearly doubling its audience in the past year. TMZ captured the
#2 ranking with 9.9 million visitors, followed by People. Significant gains were experienced by USmagazine.com, Entertainment Weekly, and The Insider.
Visitation to Entertainment News Category (May 2009 vs. May 2008, Total U.S. Home/Work/University Locations |
Location Visited | Total Unique Visitors
(000) |
May-08 | May-09 | % Change |
Total Internet : Total Audience | 190,858 | 193,825 | 2% |
Entertainment -
News | 51,285 | 54,946 | 7 |
omg! | 12,512 | 20,654 | 65 |
TMZ | 9,243 | 9,930 | 7 |
People | 9,170 | 8,285 | -10 |
USMagazine.com | 1,542 | 6,559 | 325 |
Entertainment Weekly | 2,394 | 3,923 | 64 |
E! Online | 4,017 | 3,759 | -6 |
About.com Entertainment | 3,530 | 3,243 | -8 |
TheInsider.com | 801 | 2,522 | 215 |
PerezHilton.com | 2,505 | 2,457 | -2 |
AccessHollywood.com | 1,478 | 2,268 | 53? |
Source: comScore Media Metrix, July 2009 |
"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," added Mr. Flanagan.
In April 2009, 34.8 million
videos were viewed on entertainment news sites, an increase of 52% versus year ago. TMZ led the category with 2 million video viewers and 10.3 million videos viewed. More than 1.7 million viewers
watched 3.8 million videos at omg!, while ETOnline.com served 3.9 million videos to 1.5 million viewers in April.
Online Video Viewing in the Entertainment News Category (April 2009 Total U.S. Home/Work/University Locations) |
Property | Unique Viewers (000) | Videos
(000) |
Total Internet : Total Audience | 151,652 | 16,785,432 |
Entertainment - News | 9,889 | 34,781 |
TMZ | 2,056 | 10,284 |
omg! | 1,729 | 3,762 |
ETOnline.com | 1,474 | 3,928 |
PerezHilton.com | 700 | 2,585 |
AccessHollywood.com | 566 | 1,062 |
E! Online | 495 | 899 |
TheHollywoodVoice.com | 263 | 509 |
SoapOperaDigest.com | 248 | 557 |
StarPulse.com | 235 | 400 |
Entertainment Weekly | 199 | 581 |
Source: comScore Video Metrix, July 2009 |
For the complete report, please visit comScore
here.