MILLIONS IN THE UK TUNE INTO SKY NEWS

MILLIONS in the UK and around the world tuned into Sky News to watch the American terrorist attacks on September 12.
At 13.52 BST, about seven minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Centre, Sky News was the first British television news broadcasters to report the tragedy. The service immediately showed live pictures of the crash using pictures from CBS and Fox News. Quarter of an hour later, many viewers watched the second plane crash live.
After BBC1 and ITV1, Sky News was the most watched channel in multi-channel homes yesterday.
Overnight figures suggest that Sky News audiences peaked at 985,000 between 1700 and 1714, and averaged 937,000 between 5pm and 6pm.
In comparison, BBC News 24 attracted a peak audience of 366,000 (1746-1759) and ITN News Channel peaked at 1730 –1744 at 169,000.
Overall overnight figures show that Sky News’ share of viewing in all multichannel homes was 5.88 per cent - peaking at 16.30 at 14 per cent, and the total audience tuning into Sky News between 2pm and 1am on Tuesday 11 was 4,915,812.
The death of Princess Diana was the only event that has generated higher viewing share for Sky News.
Conservative estimates suggest that Sky News’ website, one of the only news websites that managed to stay up throughout the day, received at least 10 times its usual volume of traffic.
Sky News’ interactive service – Sky News Active, dedicated three video screens to breaking coverage of the event – including one live feed from Fox News.
Sky Text audience has also dramatically increased over the last 24hours. It continued to published pictures and news as events unfolded. (CD)