• by Wayne Friedman , September 29, 2008

When it comes to the number of video streams on the Internet, the Viacom group of networks continues to be the biggest provider among traditional entertainment companies.

In July of this year, Viacom grabbed some 331 million streams in the U.S., followed closely by News Corp. at 307 million. Right behind News Corp. was Walt Disney Co. at 296 million. The findings come from a recent Turner Broadcasting study on media activity during the third quarter.

After these three major players there was a big drop-off.

Fourth place went to Turner networks at 185 million streams, followed by Yahoo at 184 million. Microsoft--with its big MSN Network--was next in sixth place, at 147 million.

The next three media companies were bunched together: Time Warner (without Turner Broadcasting) had 68.4 million streams. Comcast's collective media streams were at 68.3 million. Finally, in ninth place was General Electric and its NBC Universal media streams, with 56.3 million streams.

Turner did not provide numbers in its initial report for CBS, but added that CBS pulled in 33 million video streams in July, coming in at 19th place overall. Another report says that CBS viewers spend an average 17 minutes viewing its videos (either full-length TV shows or promotional clips online), more than any other network.

Overall, none of these traditional media companies are even close to the biggest company on the Web when it comes to streaming video: Google and its YouTube video site hit 5.1 billion streams in July.

In looking at monthly unique visitors among entertainment sites, YouTube had 75.4 million in July, with Yahoo Sports at 37.7 million. Turner Sports & Entertainment (including a Yahoo Partnership) took in 21.9 million. ESPN was next at 21.8 million. In fourth place came Imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, at 21.7 million.