Watching video

One of favorite blog sites, NewTeeVee, has an interesting take on online video.

According to number-crunchers Hitwise, graphic major news events — like the death of croc hunter Steve Irwin and the hanging of Saddam Hussein — helped spur an almost 200 percent increase in traffic to multimedia news sites in the past year. While the jump is likely of little surprise to NewTeeVee readers, one interesting nugget from Hitwise’s US News and Media report was that market share of the top 10 news and media websites actually decreased by 3.8 percent over the same period, perhaps a sign that viewers are finding and clicking on “non-traditional” news sites instead of just the big broadcast brands. Good news, long-tailers!

I looked at Knoxnews' AP Online Video Network traffic and while the number of streams is relatively small, the growth rate is huge: up 495 percent year-over-year and up 78 percent in April from March.

Granted, Virginia Tech had a big impact on the April numbers, but that's only part of the picture. I can only cleanly measure AP Online Video Network streams, but we've been ramping up our local video efforts over the past year -- and particularly in the last six months. That means the true growth in video consumption on knoxnews, a newspaper dot com, is much, much higher than the numbers above.

Maybe newspaper sites figure into the non-traditional sites mentioned as benefiting from video growth? Film at 11 for TV, if true.

Tags: video | online video | video blogging