The financial crisis means more Americans are interested in business news, which is helping business media across various mediums.
In TV, TVNewser reports that CNBC just saw its best week ever and is on pace for its best month ever:
For Business Day programming (5am-7pmET), CNBC averaged 570,000 Total Viewers the week of Oct. 6. That's up 5% from the previous high set the week before. CNBC also had its best week in 7 1/2 years in the A25-54 demo averaging 153,000 viewers.
With two weeks of October data, CNBC is having its best month ever averaging 555,000 Total Viewers; more than doubling last October's viewership.
Although magazines can't follow the market's every move in the print edition, Women's Wear Daily reports that financial magazines' websites are booming:
Figures from Nielsen Online show that for the month of September -- even before the real market meltdown began -- unique visitors to Cnnmoney.com, the Web home of Fortune, Money, and Fortune Small Business, jumped 30 percent to 10 million, and page views surged 142 percent, to 257 million, compared with September 2007. Businessweek.com saw a 25 percent surge in visitors, to four million, while page views jumped 84 percent to 20 million. Forbes.com reported a 4 percent growth in unique visitors, to eight million, and a 17 percent growth in page views, to 126 million. Portfolio.com's unique visitors totaled one million and page views two million in September, but the site's traffic was too small to be tracked by Nielsen Online last September.
Finally, even newspapers are getting in on the action, as Reuters reports that the Financial Times is boasting about four key successes:
- Newsstand sales rose 30 percent in the United States in September, and about 20 percent in Europe and Asia. That's compared to August 2008, i.e., it's a "sequential" gain rather than year-over-year growth. In the United Kingdom, Ridding said, "We basically couldn't print enough copies and retailers were running out."
- The number of registered users of FT.com rose to 750,000 now, compared with 30,000 a year ago. Some of this growth of course, came from pulling back the curtain last November. But Ridding said a couple hundred thousand of those showed up in the past few months, as the mortgage and housing crisis in the United States deepened and then metastasized into full-blown world-market-crisis mode. (Here's how registration and subscription works at FT.com)
- During one week, Ridding noted, page views hit 25 million, more than double the normal amount. Ridding's conclusion: "What [the crisis] is doing for our readership and audience is pretty remarkable. I think it really underlines this idea that at a time of turmoil, people really do need trusted guides, and are prepared to pay." (The Journal, if anyone's wondering, logged 21.7 million visitors at its website, up 110 percent from last year. It's hard to tell whether the figure is comparable.)
- During the week of Sept. 22, online page views were up 300 percent, and monthly unique visitors were up 250 percent compared with last year. The United States is pitching in so far, producing the largest number of unique users.