Millions Turn to News Websites for Casey Anthony Verdict

While the Casey Anthony murder trial has been a ratings winner for cable TV news — particularly HLN — its culmination in a not guilty verdict this afternoon sent millions to the web. Trial watchers were given a 45 minute heads-up that the verdict was coming — plenty of time for social media sites to share the news.

• Msnbc.com is reporting more than 1.25 million live video streams of the live verdict. By day’s end the site expects 8-9 million total video streams — enough to make it a top 10 day for msnbc.com. By comparison, the Japan Tsunami did about 40 million streams in one day. Page view figures aren’t in yet but it is expected to be one of the site’s top days due to the MSN and social media links pointing to the stories.

• CNN.com/live had more than 1 million live streams of the verdict as it was read just after 2:15pmET, that’s 30 times the 4-week average. During the 2-3pm hour, CNN.com quadrupled its average with more than 12 million page views.

• FOXNews.com had more than 600,000 live streams between 2-3pm, with more than 2 million total video views for the day so far. The live stream views is 10 percent higher than the previous high — news of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

• From 12pm-4pmET 1.2 million videos were streamed on ABCNews.com – three times the previous month’s average. Visits to the site jumped to five times the average in that time period from the previous month.

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