With the waves American Idol has been making on television, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the hype has spread online.
Nielsen//NetRatings, last
week reported that traffic to Fox's "American Idol" website skyrocketed during the series finale, as the popularity of the twice-weekly aired show spilled over to the Web with fans flocking to the
site.
Daily overnight analysis from Nielsen//NetRatings shows that traffic to the "American Idol" site skyrocketed 193% to 241,000 visitors on Tuesday
September 3, compared to 82,000 visitors on Tuesday, August 27. Traffic to the site peaked on Wednesday, with 308,000 surfers visiting the site, compared to 158,000 visitors the Wednesday prior.
Television ratings from Nielsen Media Research show that more than 18.7 million television viewers watched "American Idol" on Tuesday, September 4 and nearly 22.8 million TV viewers tuned in to
watch the finale.
Elsewhere on the web, with school back in session, traffic to various educational sites spiked higher during the week ending September 1st. Traffic to Collegeboard.com soared 171%
from 173,000 to 468,000 unique visitors, claiming the top spot as the fastest growing brand at home for the week ending September 1st. Sixty-four percent of the site's traffic visited the SAT Math
Question of the Day.
The Scholastic site drew 270,000 unique visitors, rising 74% from the previous week, while traffic to Sparknotes jumped 25% to 331,000 unique visitors.
Also, MTV Networks
surged 151% in traffic at work for the week ending September 1st, with more than 51% of the site's visitors logging on to view special video highlights, exclusive photos and a recap the 2002 MTV Video
Music Awards. The site attracted 976,000 unique visitors with males comprising of 66% of the total audience.