Hurricane Irene was anything but a disaster for The Weather Channel.
On Saturday, Aug. 27, the day the
storm made landfall, The Weather
Channel averaged a record 2.45
million viewers on a total-day basis,
according to Nielsen data made
available on Aug. 30. That number
surpassed the 2.27 million on Aug.
28, 2005, the day before Katrina
made landfall and began wreaking
her destruction on New Orleans and the Gulf.
During its peak in the 11:30 p.m. quarter hour Saturday,
The Weather Channel garnered more than 4 million
viewers, network officials said. From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on
Aug. 27, Weather was watched by 3.3 million people on
average.
Included in that Saturday total-day measure were an
ad-supported-cable-best 1.04 million persons 25 to 54.
On Sunday, Aug. 28, as Irene, downgraded to a tropical
storm, made her way through the Mid-Atlantic states into
New England, the service averaged 1.29 million viewers,
including 510,000 of the
aforementioned demo.
For the week of Aug. 22-
28, The Weather Channel
averaged 441,000 25-to-
54 viewers on a total-day
basis, ranking fifth among
ad-supported cable networks
for the span, according
to Nielsen.
On the digital side,
Weather.com recorded 98.9 million, 103.4 million, 87.1
million and 51 million page views, respectively, each day.
Those counts were driven by 16.2 million, 16.7 million,
14 million and 10.2 million unique visitors on those four
days.
The site set its all-time video streaming marks with
12 million on Friday and 12.9 million on Saturday. Tack
on another 7.99 million on Sunday, and Weather.com recorded
three of its top four streaming days in its history,
according to TWC officials.
