• $20 million cost, but goddamn, that was some good TV

» So, who pays the bill? Well, you would assume the mining company that owned the mine, San Esteban Primera, but they’re nearly broke. So state-owned company Codelco has owned the effort, paying $15 million of the total cost, with private firms paying the rest. Expect lawsuits and criminal charges.

And here are the big winners:

• 3.4 million number of viewers CNN got in the first hour of the rescue
• 7 million number of viewers Fox News got in the final hour of the mining escapade

• 4M pageviews per minute on news sites at the peak of the mining incident
• $7,000 worth of sunglasses given away to the miners by Oakley
• $41Mthe amount of free advertising Oakley got in the process source