Note the 83 million is a cumulative viewer total (people who watched at least 1 Minute) and not an average viewer total across the whole two hours. Average viewership at any point during the two hours was 24.11 million.
Via MTV:
“HOPE FOR HAITI NOW: A GLOBAL BENEFIT FOR EARTHQUAKE RELIEF”
DRAWS 83 MILLION TELEVISION VIEWERS IN THE UNITED STATES
“Hope for Haiti Now” Raises More than $61 Million to Date
“Hope for Haiti Now” Also Attracts 5.8 Million Online Video Streams over the Weekend
NEW YORK, NY (January 25, 2010) – “Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief,” drew a cumulative audience of more than 83 million viewers and a gross average audience of more than 24 million viewers in the United States, according to Nielsen Media Research. The telethon has now raised more than $61 million in donations from the general public to date. “Hope for Haiti Now” aired on Friday, January 22, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT and 7:00 p.m. CT, across networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, The CW, HBO, MTV, VH1, CMT, PBS, TNT, Showtime, AMC, CNBC, COMEDY CENTRAL, Bravo, E! Entertainment, MSNBC, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, G4, CENTRIC, Current TV, Fuse, MLB Network, EPIX, Palladia, SoapNet, Style, Discovery Health, Planet Green, CNN en Español, HBO Latino, Logo, MTV2, MTV Tr3s, MTV Hits, VH1 Classic and VH1 Soul.
Across the Web and mobile, “Hope for Haiti Now” attracted 1.9 million video streams during the live broadcast. Between the live broadcast and replays of the performances available on MTV.com and other sites, “Hope for Haiti Now” attracted 5.8 million total streams throughout the weekend, including more than 150,000 mobile streams. The “Hope for Haiti Now” iPhone app, which allowed for live streaming of the broadcast, has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Streaming data was compiled using data provided by Omniture, Akamai, as well as sites and mobile carriers that streamed “Hope for Haiti Now.”
“Hope for Haiti Now” was also the most Tweeted topic of the weekend, according to social media monitoring firm Collective Intellect. The "Hope for Haiti Now" Twitter Tracker, built by Stamen Design for MTV.com and hopeforhaitinow.org, recorded more than 1 million Tweets around the event on Friday evening alone.
“Hope for Haiti Now” will continue accepting donations for six months via the following methods:
• Online: www.hopeforhaitinow.org
• Phone: 877-99-HAITI
• Text: Text “GIVE” to 50555
• Mail: Hope For Haiti Now Fund, Entertainment Industry Foundation,
1201 West 5th Street, Suite T-700, Los Angeles, CA 90017
“Hope for Haiti Now,” benefits Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation, and the Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation. Proceeds from “Hope for Haiti Now” will be split among each organization’s individual funds for Haiti earthquake relief. With the exception of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, each partner organization was selected for its history of operation and collaboration within the nongovernmental organization (NGO) community in Haiti.
“Hope for Haiti Now” was led by Wyclef Jean in New York City, George Clooney in Los Angeles, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper reporting from Haiti, and featured performances by Wyclef Jean, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Shakira, and Sting in New York City; Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Stevie Wonder, Taylor Swift, Emeline Michel and a group performance by Keith Urban, Kid Rock, and Sheryl Crow in Los Angeles; and Beyoncé, Coldplay, and a group performance by Bono, The Edge, Jay-Z, and Rihanna in London.
“Hope for Haiti Now” also featured appearances by President Bill Clinton, Ben Stiller, Brad Pitt, Chris Rock, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jon Stewart, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, and Muhammad Ali. More than one hundred of the biggest names in film, television, and music also supported “Hope for Haiti Now” by answering phones and taking donations.
"Hope for Haiti Now" was produced by Joel Gallen and Tenth Planet Productions, in collaboration with Viacom’s MTV Networks and George Clooney.
Is it odd that on average each viewer donated less than a dollar?
awesome
You’re right. On average, each viewer gave 73 cents
I don’t think it’s odd at all — I’d be surprised if more than a third of the people who watched at least six minutes of the telethon even thought about picking up the phone. But again, as in other discussions on this topic, a lot of the viewers might have already contributed via alternative means prior to the telethon. The $61 million is the money raised just from the telethon, a lot more than that has been raised in total.
OMG–I can’t believe only 83 million watched this.
/snark
This just goes to show all those who were shocked by the 18M viewer mark on broadcast, that broadcast isn’t all that it used to be. Someone said he doubts it would even double.
“Gross average audience of more than 24 million viewers in the United States.”
Roland, see what J said above, It did not double! But because it was for a good cause I didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to all those networks on cable not really boosting the numbers a whole lot.
While “Gross Average Audience” is a little different than the average audience numbers we usually would report, I don’t know enough about any additional airings of the telethon to know if there’s a difference in this case between average audience and gross average audience. If they ran the telethon again after 8p-10p Friday those numbers too could get into GAA, but either way, it only added ~8 million average viewers to the broadcast net totals.
Update: Nielsen confirms average audience of 24,107,000. I guess MTV brought the Gross Average Audience label into play because of all the networks it was on.
The telethon had a bigger average audience than the Katrina telethon in 2005 that was on 27 networks and averaged 22.152 million viewers, but was dwarfed by the 9/11 benefit on 9/21/2001 that run on 30 networks and averaged 59.3 million.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/hope-for-haiti-telecast-reaches-83-million-viewers-across-multiple-networks/
I wonder if there will be numbers for online streaming, I watched this through Youtube’s streaming which was available worldwide (well except the countries that blocks the site)
A very good effort I think.
Thats a pretty impressive viewing number at 24 million considering that many had already donated. And I don’t believe anyone expected it to top the 9/11 event which I believe also ran on a Friday.
If you think about it the us government pledged $100,000,000 to Haiti relief with 300,000,000 or so people in USA this works out to 33 cents per USA person