• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 6, 2009

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."

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.