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Michael and Farrah: You Can't Get Enough News
Barry King/ Getty Images
Farrah Fawcett's death was big news—until Michael Jackson's death became bigger news?
By the big media indexes, it looks that way.
Last night on prime-time TV, Jackson trumped Fawcett with three broadcast network hours to two. (That count counts Dateline NBC's two-hour, Fawcett-Jackson twofer as separate hours.) Accordingly, Jackson drew the overall larger crowd, 19.2 million viewers, per preliminary Nielsen estimates, to the Fawcett hours' combined 13.4 million. (Cable ratings weren't yet available.)
In the blogosphere, the gap between Jackson and Fawcett was even wider.
According to Nielsen, Jackson generated nearly nine times as many blog posts yesterday as Fawcett.
If you felt wrung out by the twin deaths of pop icons—one passing, sadly, expected, the other shocking—imagine what your poor Internet connection went through.
According to data at the Internet Traffic Report, Web traffic time, or the speed at which connections are made, began to creep up—or slow down, as it were—at around 3 p.m., shortly after Jackson's death was announced. Traffic remained at high levels throughout the night and demanded patience of users trying to find information on this site and others.
Traffic surged Thursday morning as well, after Fawcett's death was confirmed around 10 a.m., but not to nearly the degree it did in the afternoon.
Even David Letterman and Conan O'Brien got shoved aside by Jackson's death: A Nightline special on the entertainer, hosted by famous Jackson interviewer Martin Bashir, ruled late-night TV, per TVNewser, with 5.3 million viewers.
It was coverage of Fawcett, however, not Jackson, who generated the night's single biggest tribute audience. At 10 p.m., ABC's 20/20 special on the Charlie's Angels star scored 8.2 million viewers, and bested head-to-head Jackson coverage on CBS and NBC.
The two stars' stories have only begun to vie for our attention, with even more Fawcett and Jackson TV specials on tap for the weekend.
Well, at least your Internet connection might be able to catch its bandwidth breath…
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