A giant audience formed for Michael Jackson's memorial service, as millions gathered in public, in front of televisions and at computer screens to experience the mourning of the celebrated pop star.
The media-saturated event was expected to rival the online audience of even President Barack Obama's January inauguration -- which similarly was a daytime event witnessed by many on their computers at work.
In Jackson's hometown, Gary, Ind., a steady stream of fans were visiting the singer's boyhood home. Christina Storms drove more than 260 miles from New Albany, Ind., to bring her seven-year-old and 10-year-old daughters to see the home where Jackson lived until age 11.
Aside from the wall-to-wall coverage planned by the TV networks and cable news channels, the memorial service was streamed online by many news outlets and websites, including Hulu.com, MySpace.com and The New York Times' website. The Associated Press' online video network also was offering a live broadcast.
Several outlets rolled out interactive features previously used for Obama's inauguration. CNN.com planned to integrate its live video with chatter from Facebook.
"This has a shot to be one of the biggest lives events we've hoisted up," said Kenneth "KC" Estenson, senior vice-president and general manager of CNN.com. "It's tracking to be pretty big."
Estenson noted, though, that live video on the web is still in the nascent stage. A huge swell of traffic -- and the heavy bandwidth of video -- can cause troubles across the web.
"Live video on the web is still a dicey proposition any way you cut it," said Estenson. "We've built out the infrastructure to be able to handle a very large event."
Alan Wurtzel, chief of research at NBC Universal, called it "the first multi-platform significant culture event."
"This is definitely going to be the first worldwide event where there is going to be a significant amount of multi-platform viewing," said Wurtzel. "But I don't have a clue how many people are going to watch it."
Not all of the coverage was to be virtual.
Cinedigm Digital Cinema Network said it would carry the service on its live digital network in more than 80 movie theatres nationwide.
Crowds gathered outside Harlem's Apollo Theater in New York -- where the Jackson 5 won "Amateur Night" in 1967 -- and in Detroit, where his career was launched with Motown Records.
Hundreds of people filled into the auditorium at Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where the memorial service was to be shown on a giant screen.
"I think he was somebody who really did change the style of music," said Jonathan Contreras, a 23-year-old college student from Westland, Mich. "They call him the King of Pop. I call him the King of Music."
Outside the White House in Washington, Rocky Twyman, a community activist, asked tourists to sign a "book of condolences" for Jackson's family.
"We consider him a national hero," said Twyman. "We want people to remember the good things he did."
A total of 8,750 people out of 1.6 million registrants were chosen to receive two tickets each to the memorial service in downtown Los Angeles. The family announced that participants would include Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant and Jennifer Hudson. Many more luminaries were expected to attend.
The 50-year-old singer's June 25 death brought an outpouring of grief and remembrance from fans across the globe.
The reaction was especially considerable online, where many people first read the news. The avalanche of traffic temporarily brought Twitter, Wikipedia and AOL's instant messaging service to a crawl.
Jackson generated the most tweets per second since Obama was elected president in November. Akamai's Net Usage Index, which monitors global news consumption online, found that web traffic to news sites increased by about 50 per cent.
The computers running Google's news section even briefly interpreted the fusillade of "Michael Jackson" requests as an automated attack.
Traffic flowed to YouTube, where many celebrated Jackson by watching his iconic music videos. Last week, Internet video research firm Visible Measures said Jackson's 14-minute, 1983 video "Thriller" had been watched more than 8.5 million times online since his death.
At the same time, others have grown tired of the continual coverage of Jackson's death, believing it has overshadowed more important news and that Jackson -- who was tried and acquitted of sexually abusing a child in 2005 -- doesn't deserve such attention.
A Pew Research Center poll published last week found that 64 per cent of those surveyed said Jackson's death has received too much coverage
