Sandy Coverage: ABC O&Os Report Record Traffic

WPVI in Philadelphia hits 13.9 million page views on Monday

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/30/2012 3:11:07 PM

Some stations that were streaming their live coverage of Hurricane Sandy to the web and their mobile apps are beginning to report record traffic.

The ABC O&O, WPVI in Philadelphia, hit a single day record of 13.1 million page views across mobile and desktop on Monday October 29^th and had over 9 million page views on Sunday, October 28^th.

Meanwhile, The ABC owned WABC station in New York City also hit a record 7 million page views on mobile and desktop on October 29, when it had 2 million unique visitors.

With both stations streaming their coverage live on their web sites and over the apps to mobile devices, they also reported a noticeable uptick in app downloads. The WABC and WPVI mobile apps rose up into the top ten free news apps for the iPhone, with WPVI ranking number 4 at around 2 p.m. ET on October 30 and WABC at number 10.

Other stations in the top 10 free iPhone news apps, which is usually dominated by national news organizations, included WFSB-TV, the Hearst ABC affiliate in Boston Mass. at number six and WCVB, the CBS affiliate for Hartford Conn. that is owned by Meredith at number seven.

The app for Cablevision's News 12 cable news channel also rose into the top 10 free iPhone news app at the number two spot, behind CNN which was the most popular free iPhone news app.