A press release from WebTrends highlights the massive traffic Chinese state broadcaster CCTV experienced during their coverage of the olympic games. While we hear the CCTV online video coverage was delivered at lower quality than NBC due to the current state and capacity of Chinese networks, CCTV.com managed to average more than 6 million unique viewers per day during the games versus 4.3 million per day for NBC.

This is not an apples to apples comparison, China has more than 4x the population of the U.S., so more viewers is to be expected. But 100 million total viewers is nothing to sneeze at and a testament to how far China’s networks have come. CCTV.com streamed more than 3,800 hours of live coverage, 1,600 more than NBCOlympics.com. To a large extent the Chinese public is skipping cable and going directly to broadband for their media experience.