Terrorist Tragedy Sends New Zealanders Online To Monitor News As It Happens - Nielsen//NetRatings
Auckland – 12 September 2001 – In the period immediately following the first attack on the New York World Trade Centre,
New Zealand and Australian web surfers flocked to US news sites to monitor the rapidly developing situation.
New Zealand at-home audiences to the US news site cnn.com were 371 percent higher than this site’s daily average
audience during the month of August, reports the world’s leading web audience measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings.
In Australia cnn.com’s home-based audience was 477 percent higher than the daily site average for August 2001.
The role of the Internet in providing up-to-date coverage of breaking stories and events was also reflected in
significantly higher audience levels across a range of other US based web news sites.
Australian home audiences to msnbc.com were already up by more than 500 percent against MSNBC’s daily average audience
in less than half a day. Similarly New York’s major daily newspaper web site nytimes.com had recorded 400 plus percent
audience growth in the first twelve hours of today.
Audience usage patterns also reflected the high level of home surfer interest in both countries. Total time spent by New
Zealand home based surfers at cnn.com grew by 1100 percent overall in the 12 hour period, and average time spent by each
user on the site was 255 percent higher than the average time spent each day on this site during the August.
“As we did not record any significant growth in the number of page views recorded by visitors to US based news sites it
is clear that our local surfers are focusing on main news page and perhaps also making much greater use of streaming
video and audio links to stay in touch with the latest breaking news,” said Brian Milnes, Managing Director,
Nielsen//NetRatings Australasian operations.
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