Convention Attracts Greater Audience Than '04

Both Old And New Media Are Seeing Increased Hits

by Kevin Friedl

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008


The early indicators are that the Democratic convention has been a TV hit, particularly on cable news, but success isn't limited strictly to old media -- online traffic has grown as well, in some cases even faster than the ratings of the major cable news channels.

Convention committee officials say that their Web site attracted more than 1 million unique viewers during the first two days of events, and that some 345,000 people logged in to watch high-definition streaming video of the speeches.

Driven by a spike during Tuesday prime time, when Hillary Rodham Clinton and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer addressed the hall, those figures easily outpaced traffic from the first day of the Boston convention in 2004, when the Democrats' site drew about 240,000 visitors.

Given the drama surrounding Clinton's speech, it's not surprising that the site saw an influx of people seeking the text and video of her remarks. And with former President Bill Clinton and vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden scheduled to speak on Wednesday night, organizers said they were only expecting that the audience would grow. "We did put a lot of stuff into place to handle traffic," said Aaron Myers, head of the convention's online outreach effort. "You always prepare for as much as you can."

The attention is good news for Democrats, but its immediate consequences might be blunted by fundraising restrictions that limit when the Democratic National Convention Committee can link its site to Barack Obama's official site, a major engine for generating campaign cash.

Links or not, though, it's fair to say more people than usual are heading to BarackObama.com this week, where traffic grew steadily in the days immediately preceding the convention. According to numbers provided by Nielsen Online, the site garnered some 3.3 million unique visitors in July, more than twice the number who went to JohnMcCain.com.

Bloggers, too, are seeing increased attention online as more people log on for opinion and news from the ground. Daily Kos, which has established a large presence here, has seen what chief operating officer Will Rockafellow called a "significant jump" in traffic in recent days. He added that the site has yet to regain the readership it enjoyed during the height of the Democratic primary season, "but we're getting up there." Smaller bloggers are also reporting an uptick in attention, particularly those with access to the convention floor.

A spokesman for Huffington Post, another blog-aggregating site that has imported writers for the convention, said in an e-mail that their traffic "shot up" on Monday and Tuesday. Compared with the last Monday and Tuesday of July -- when coverage of Obama's trip overseas dominated the news -- unique visitors to the site are up by more than 20 percent, according to figures provided by the site.

And, in a sign that people are reading more of their convention news online, the number of comments posted to the site rose from fewer than 35,000 in late July to about 63,000 this week.

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