Celeb Sites Done For? Not So Fast

The Observer's Doree Shafrir wonders if "audience fatigue" has set in among consumers of online celebrity news -- a development which, if genuine, would be very bad news for the New York Post and its soon-to-relaunch PageSix.com. I know that I'm sick to death of celebrity news, but I'm not convinced about everyone else, for reasons I'll explain below.

Shafrir writes:

A quick glance at the Nielsen/NetRatings stats for the past three months shows that the only site that's shown growth is People.com, which had 6.5 million unique U.S. visitors in September, up by more than 1.5 million since July. TMZ's growth appears to have stagnated in the same time period, though that site's traffic still dwarves People's: In July, TMZ recorded nearly 10.3 million visitors, which dipped to 9.4 million in August and jumped back up to July levels in September. By contrast, UsMagazine.com's traffic has stagnated at around the 1 million mark since July, and Perez Hilton's uniques have gone from 2.4 million in July to 2.2 million in September.

But she leaves out the second-biggest entertainment site: Yahoo's OMG!, which drew 6.7 million uniques in September, according to Nielsen Online -- despite having launched only four months earlier. (That little nugget of info is buried in this New York Times story.) That's powerful evidence that there's still some room left in this market, at least for players who have sufficient cross-promotional muscle -- which I'm thinking the Post and its parent company, News Corp., probably do.

Another confounding factor here is the calendar. Celebrity-news sites weren't the only ones to experience a slow September; traffic to MySpace, Facebook and YouTube was down as well. AdWeek attributed the drop-off to the start of the school year.

I'm not saying the Post has the next TMZ on its hands. But it's too early to rule it out.