An official with the choir asked Caldwell last fall if the site would like an exclusive clip of the Christmas concert for the Web. "I immediately said that would be great. The choir is so popular anyway, and I loved the idea of presenting it to our audience. And the church thought that beliefnet was a good venue.

"There were no financial arrangements made. They didn't pay to put it up, and we didn't pay for it. We agreed it would just be a good thing to do," she said.

Barrick said the LDS Church is comfortable with the Web site and the balanced view it presents of Latter-day Saint issues. "We've had discussions with them about the choir and the church in general. Beliefnet has been quite nice to the church, with an LDS page that's very broad-based in its treatment and very fair.

"We said we could do something just for them," he said. "I think it's a nice thing for beliefnet — they were anxious to do it. And we're obviously very pleased with the exposure. It's turned out to be a nice thing for us."

Other promotional efforts for the CD, which was released in September, included contracting with an outside public relations firm that orchestrated the church's first-ever "satellite press tour" for the choir, where Jessop was able to speak live with television stations in selected major metro areas before they showed a clip of the Christmas concert for their audiences.

Barrick said there was an effort to especially market in Minnesota, where there is a heavy concentration of Norwegian culture already familiar with Sissel.

Unlike single authors or musicians, the choir can't simply hit the road for a promotional tour, Barrick said, so technology provided the next best thing. "The Conference Center has such great communications capabilities. We can beam the choir right in there just like they're there."

Sissel has been active promoting both the Christmas CD and a new CD she produced, and she spent time earlier this month doing pledge drives for PBS television stations that are featuring the concert as part of their Christmas lineup this year.

Scott Chaffin, director of programming at KUED, Channel 7, said his station aired the concert Wednesday night locally and will do so again on Christmas Eve. Some 24,000 households tuned in Wednesday, and the show got "outstanding ratings in several major metro areas, including Minneapolis, San Francisco, St. Louis and Phoenix."

Nationally, it averaged a 1.4 rating, making it the most-watched show in PBS' prime-time lineup Wednesday. Chaffin said it looks like the program will achieve a 97.5 percent coverage of the United States, meaning "nearly every PBS station in the country will air it at least once, and in some cases, several times. It looks to me like there are 1,755 broadcasts of the program planned across the nation at different stations between now and the end of the year."