Websites Where You Can Watch the Michael Jackson Memorial Online Today

Today is July 7, and if you’ve been paying any attention to the news in the past week, you’d know that that means today is the day of the big Michael Jackson circus out in LA. At 10:00am Pacific Time, Jackson’s memorial service will begin at the Staples Center. A mere 17,500 fans will be in attendance, and with over 1.6 million fans having applied to win tickets to the service, there is certainly a demand to see the memorial. While many are likely to make the pilgrimage to LA to stand outside the arena, many more will be at home in front of their computers and TVs looking to catch a glimpse of the action. Fortunately, a number of our favorite websites will be streaming live video of the event.

It will be interesting to see how the websites offering the video feed will handle what is expected to be high levels of traffic and demand for the videos. The demand that the singer’s death alone caused on various websites and search engines was incredible, and since video is so a resource intensive, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to expect some glitches.

If you’re looking to witness the spectacle, and see some of the music industry’s most famous stars pay tribute to Michael Jackson - including Smokey Robinson, Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder, and Mariah Carey, amongst others - here’s a list of sites you can go to to tune in:

• CBSNews.com - will stream live video from Los Angeles-based KCBS & other sources.
• TV.com - will also stream the CBS content.
• Cnn.com - will stream the service with hosts Larry King, Anderson Cooper, and Soledad O’Brien.
• ABCNews.com - will stream live with commentary from Charles Gibson.
• FoxNews.com - will stream live with Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, and Greta Van Susteren providing on-scene reports.
• Facebook.com - members can access the CNN Live feed.
• MySpace.com - members can access a live stream provided by AEG, the entertainment company that owns the Staples Center and who underwrote the Jackson tour.
• Hulu.com - will stream the Fox News feed live.

Hulu seems best poised to handle the load as one of the internet’s most popular destinations for videos already. Most of the other sites are also used to large spikes of traffic, so I doubt any will crash completely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people get shut out of the video feeds or if things slow to a crawl at times.

What will also be interesting to take a look at today is the Google Hot Trends, which is sure to be dominated by Michael Jackson related searches. I’m predicting that at least half of the 100 or so queries that make the cut will be MJ-related.