Web Ratings

According to Hitwise, ABC again topped the list of broadcast-network web sites for the week ending Oct. 31, with CBS again occupying the runner-up slot.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars was the most-visited TV-show web site, followed by Fox's America's Most Wanted (up from No. 6) and CBS's Survivor slipping one slot to third. Fox's So You Think You Can Dance jumped to No. 12 from No. 28.

As for cable shows (adults only), Comedy Central's South Park grabbed the top spot, followed by No. 2 Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta and No. 3 BET's 106 and Park.

Combining broadcast and cable, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants was No. 1, with South Park coming in second and Dancing with the Stars third, the same order as last week.

Riding the Halloween wave, Travel's Ghost Adventures web site leaped to No. 14 from No. 140 and Syfy's Ghost Hunters site jumped to No. 23 from No. 51.

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According to Hitwise, ABC topped the list of broadcast-network Websites for the week ending Oct. 24, with CBS occupying the No. 2 slot.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars was the most-visited broadcast-show Website, followed by CBS' Survivor at No. 2 and Fox's America's Most Wanted at No. 3.

As for cable shows (adults only), Comedy Central's South Park grabbed the top spot, followed by No. 2 Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta and No. 3 Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.

When combining broadcast and cable networks, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants was No. 1, with South Park coming in second and Dancing with the Stars third.

Fast risers on the broadcast list were Fox's The Simpsons (to No. 15 from No. 29) and ABC's The Castle (25 from 41).

Cable's lone fast riser was BET's The Game (13 from 38), and there were no fast risers among the top 25 Websites.

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Jennifer Saba of Editor & Publisher reports that new numbers from Nielsen Online show The Huffington Post passing Washingtonpost.com in unique users in September.

Granted, HuffPost is a long way from challenging Yahoo! News for leadership among current events and global news web properties. Yahoo's news site had 42.6 million unique visitors in September, while HuffPost was at No. 15 with 9.4 million uniques. Still, the liberal blog -- which mixes progressive opinion pieces with aggregated news, videos and plenty of celebrity photos and coverage -- draws more traffic than a number of "old media" web properties, including Hearst Newspapers Digital, the BBC and Cox Newspapers.

Saba writes that Nielsen urges caution regarding year-over-year comparisons because the measurement company in June made its audience panel eight times larger. Fine, but the current data is the current data, and HuffPost is positioned to pass USATODAY.com (9.9 million uniques in September), McClatchy Newspaper Network (10.5 million) and CBS News Digital Network (10.6 million) if the 26 percent year-over-year growth cited by Nielsen is anywhere near accurate.

The other interesting thing I noticed from Saba's article is that Yahoo! News had nearly three times as many unique visitors in September as Google News, which was in ninth place with 14.6 million. Here's at least one area where Yahoo has the upper hand over the search giant.

CBS and ABC remained the top two broadcast-network websites for the week ending Oct. 10, according to Hitwise.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars continued as the most-visited broadcast-show Website, followed by CBS's NCIS at No. 2 and FOX's America's Most Wanted at No. 3.

Comedy Central's South Park once again claimed the top spot among adult cable shows, followed by Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta and BET's 106 & Park.

The big movers among cable web sites were:

TLC's 18 Kids and Counting, up to No. 10 from No. 34

Discovery's Dirty Jobs, to 17 from 48

Comedy Central's Tosh.0, to 20 from 73

Travel's Madventures, to 21 from 146

Of combined broadcast and cable networks, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants was the top TV show web site, ahead of South Park and The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

According to Hitwise, CBS and ABC were the top two broadcast-network Websites for the week ending Oct. 3.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars was the most-visited broadcast-show Website, followed by two CBS shows: NCIS at No. 2 and Survivor at No. 3.

As for cable shows (adults only), Comedy Central's South Park claimed the top spot, followed by Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta and BET's 106 & Park.

When combining broadcast and cable networks, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants finished at No. 1, followed by South Park and Cartoon Network's Clone Wars.

Fast risers on the broadcast list were CBS' Three Rivers (to No. 6 from No. 63), ABC's Desperate Housewives (7 from 18), ABC's Extreme Makeover (15 from 35) and CBS' Ghost Whisperer (22 from 34).

Cable's fast risers were TLC's Jon and Kate Plus 8 (6 from 19), Food Network's The Next Iron Chef (10 from 114), Spike TV's The Ultimate Fighter (15 from 29), CNN's Larry King Live (16 from 30), Animal Planet's Lost Tapes (20 from 49) and Food's Tyler's Ultimate (24 from 34).

Fast risers among the top 25 Websites were Three Rivers (12 from 181), Desperate Housewives (14 from 39) and Jon and Kate Plus 8 (19 from 54).

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TalkingPointsMemo.com announced four straight months of the highest traffic in its history aside from the 10 weeks before the 2008 presidential election, as well as three hires.

The political-analysis site set new monthly unique-reader marks from June-September of 1,665,146, 1,724,824, 1,851,454 and 2,084,889, respectively, resulting in 54% more viewers of the site in September than in May.

TalkingPointsMemo.com also announced the hires of Reuters.com's Ben Frumin as senior news editor, as well as the additions of The Washington Times' Christina Bellantoni and Hotline's Evan McMorris-Santoro to its new bureau in Washington, D.C. Bellantoni will cover the White House, while McMorris-Santoro will focus on campaigns and elections.

Netscape founder Mark Andreessen led a financing round in July of $500,000-$1 million for TalkingPointsMemo.com parent TPM Media.

Media-news and analysis site Mediaite drew more than 438,000 unique visitors and over 2.3 million page views from Sept. 6-Oct. 5, up 40% from its debut month, which began July 6.

The site cracked Quantcast's list of the top 5,000 Web properties, and it topped 20,000 unique visitors on 10 different days during the month.

According to Hitwise, CBS and NBC remained the top two broadcast-network Websites for the week ending Sept. 12.

CBS' Big Brother was the most-visited broadcast-show Website once again, with Fox's American Idol claiming the second spot and newcomer Fox's Glee coming in third.

As for cable shows (adults only), Comedy Central snatched the top three spots with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Colbert Report and South Park, respectively.

When combining broadcast and cable networks, Big Brother wrestled the top spot away from No. 2 Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Daily Show claimed the No. 3 position.

Fast risers on the broadcast list were three shows from The CW: Supernatural (to No. 13 from No. 24), America's Next Top Model (14 from 30) and 90210 (17 from 34).

Cable's fast risers were MTV's America's Best Dance Crew (13 from 35) and Food Network's Everyday Italian (24 from 39).

Fast risers among the top 25 Websites were Glee (10 from 25), Cartoon Network's Ben 10: Alien Force (16 from 30), Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor (19 from 40), Fox's So You Think You Can Dance (21 from 38) and America's Best Dance Crew (23 from 64).

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Dissatisfied with the current state of cross-platform television audience measurement, a group of major media and advertising executives has formed a consortium to come up with better metrics.

According to Broadcast & Cable's Claire Atkinson, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement is "widely seen as an attempt to either bypass Nielsen (Media Research) or to push it towards more speedy progress in the realm of online video and mobile measurement data collection."

Coalition members include:

* Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner
* George Bodenheimer, President of ESPN and ABC Sports, and Co-Chair, Disney Media Networks
* Philippe Dauman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Viacom
* Dina Howell, Vice President, Global Media & Brand Operations, The Procter & Gamble Company
* Esther Lee, Senior Vice President, Brand Marketing and Advertising, AT&T
* Anne Sweeney, President, Disney-ABC Television Group and co-chair, Disney Media Networks
* Page Thompson, CEO, North America, Omnicom Media Group
* Jeff Zucker, President and CEO, NBC Universal

Not exactly a cubicle-farm collection of talent. As Atkinson puts it:

That so many senior level executives, rather than their research counterparts, have put their name to this effort goes some way to showing how serious the industry is about forming a new vision on how to count and charge for audiences watching TV shows on new platforms. The group intends to hire a managing director to pull that vision together.

Nielsen itself lately has been pushing its "three-screen" audience measurement initiative. Last week the company released a report on Q2 video consumption habits on television, the Internet and mobile devices. And on Wednesday Nielsen announced an "Internet meter" designed to measure Web television viewership, but that it wouldn't be fully implemented until 2011.

Which probably seems a long way off for advertisers and broadcasters desperate to sort out a winning revenue model for online video.

According to Hitwise, CBS and NBC remained the top two broadcast-network Websites for the week ending Sept. 5.

CBS' Big Brother repeated as the most-visited broadcast-show Website, with Fox's America's Most Wanted and American Idol swapping positions, coming in at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively.

As for cable shows (adults only), the top three were unchanged from the week of Aug. 29: Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and South Park, followed by Home & Garden Television's Design Star.

When combining broadcast and cable networks, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants remained atop the list, followed by Big Brother and South Park.

Fast risers on the broadcast list were Fox's Glee (to No. 7 from No. 39) and Fox's So You Think You Can Dance (9 from 30).

Cable's fast risers were Comedy Central's Colbert Report (4 from 65) and TLC's 18 Kids and Counting (17 from 48).

Fast risers among the top 25 Websites were Design Star (4 from 19), Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta (7 from 32), America's Most Wanted (14 from 24), Food Network's Barefoot Contessa (15 from 27), Nick at Nite's Glenn Martin DDS (18 from DNR), MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann (21 from 33) and CBS' NCIS (24 from 35).

Click here to see the report.