• by Wayne Friedman , October 31, 2012

With overall damage estimates of Hurricane Sandy in the tens of billions, media revenues lost could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But some media platforms could make gains.

Brian Wieser, media analyst of the Pivotal Research Group, says the advertising industry could lose around $500 million in revenue -- all this from pre-empted inventory on local TV and radio programming.

Conversely, Wieser says radio could make a gain with advertisers -- especially those with East Coast listeners with little to no access of other media, such as television. Another media research group says digital media witnessed a surge in activity.  For some, that represents a specific value.

When looking at all social media platforms, research company General Sentiment says the total "Impact Media Value" of the storm comes to a massive $80,711,454. This is the "measure all of the impact the discussion has had online," says the company.

Breaking this down, the general social media discussion of Hurricane Sandy on Twitter, amount to nearly $60 million; news media sites comes to a value of almost $12 million; and other social media platforms totals $9.2 million.

By way of comparison, Hurricane Irene of a year ago had a total media value of $17,878,842, with digital news media of value of $11,849,017; with social media, $2,746,635; and Twitter, $3,283,190.

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