WebProNews

American Idol helped boost visits to Fox Broadcasting's Web site, doubling traffic in January compared with December.

American Idol
(Photo Credit: Fox Interactive Media)

Nielsen Online said Fox had 4.6 million unique visitors in January, a 101 percent increase from December, beating out CBS (4.5 million, a 24 % decrease) for the month. The two networks still lag behind ABC.com and NBC.com, which had 8.1 million and 7.9 million visitors respectively.

Along with American Idol, the Fox Web site was helped by the return of "Prison Break" and the debut of "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles," Bill Bradford, senior vp content strategy at Fox told Reuters. While Fox does not stream American Idol episodes on its site, it managed to be the most visited property with approximately 1.1 million visitors.

ABC.com had an 11 percent increase for the month, due in part to "Lost's" January 31 return. Although the streaming figures for "Lost" will be counted for February's numbers, ABC heavily promoted the show on the site throughout the month.

In addition ABC made the first three seasons of "Lost" available online and introduced "Lost Theories," which allowed viewers to upload videos to the site explaining their own theories about the series.