It’s something we’ve been saying at Advancing the Story for a long time — multimedia allows you to tell more people more of your story.  Now, Nielsen research finds that it might help TV stations make more money.

Nielsen tracked total audience — both on air and online — for the ABC affiliates in Seattle and Portland.  The researchers found that “each received at least a 3% bump in the 25-to-54 demo in the May 2011 sweeps period.”

So, at a time when audiences for the on air product may be shrinking, TV stations have an opportunity to make up for some of that loss with their online content.

Also, Web sites may be able to help stations reach more males. In Seattle, late local news viewership skewed 71% female. Yet a majority 53% of komonews.com users were male.

According to the story on mediapost.com, Nielsen is trying to expand its measurement of TV and online usage in local markets.