UK TV Videos Dominate Web in April

Written by Steve Donohue

Friday, May 1. 2009 at 10:25 AM EDT Post a comment

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They may not be generating any revenue for YouTube and other viral video sites, but a series of performances from United Kingdom TV show Britain's Got Talent dominated the Web in April.

Videos from Susan Boyle and other performers on the show, including a 12-year-old girl, controlled seven of the top nine videos on Google's YouTube in April. Clips featuring Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream," from Les Misérables, have generated more than 111 million views since her performance was first uploaded to YouTube on April 11.

To put those numbers in perspective, CBS Sports generated 7.52 million unique viewers to its March Madness On Demand college basketball coverage earlier this year, which is traditionally one of the biggest events of the year in terms of traffic.

But while CBS generated about $30 million in online ad revenues in March with its coverage of the basketball tournament, YouTube isn't generating any ad revenues from the Boyle videos and the other clips from Britain's Got Talent that are dominating the Website. The clips of the 48-year-old amateur Scottish singer contain no advertising.

The Boyle video even rocketed to second place last month at Break.com, a site popular with young men, generating more than 1.77 million views. But her performance was topped on Break.com by a video of adult film star Aria Giovanni demonstrating how to boil an egg. [Ed. note: Those boys love their cooking.] The clip generated about 2.2 million views, making it the No. 1 viral video on Break.com in April.

Hulu doesn't detail the view counts for its TV series and movies, choosing instead to rank titles by popularity. Episodes of Fox's Family Guy were the top four videos of the month there, while episodes of NBC's The Office controlled slots five through eight.

CBS Interactive's TV.com also doesn't detail the number of views for each of its videos. But ranked by popularity, its top programs in March were episodes of Lost, Heroes, NCIS, House, and American Idol.