Paralympics doubles Australia's online TV audience

From News.com in Australia, and a journalism student at the University of Sydney wrote about the increased online viewership due to the Paralympics. Australians are proud of their viewership and placing 5th in the number of Paralympics medals won. I wish America would follow Australia's lead; the USA came in third in the medal tally, but were very dismal in our media coverage.

The ABC's (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) digital station has doubled its weekly audience, thanks to the Paralympics.

Viewer reach on ABC2 went from 700,000 to 1.5m each week in the past three months, according to OzTam, which started measuring the station in June.

The growth comes largely as a result of the recent live coverage of the Paralympic Games.

On average about 1.3m Australians across the five major cities tuned in to watch at least five minutes or more of the Games.

Children's programming also was doing well, drawing in more preschoolers than pay TV's Nickelodeon and Disney, the ABC said.

ABC managing director Mark Scott was impressed by the figures.

"This is convincing evidence that new content is driving Australian audiences to take up digital television," he said.

The most popular program on ABC2 is the British series Scrapheap Challenge, a game show where teams compete to make a working machine out of junk yard materials.

It has a peak audience of about 91,000.