Hi Tony,
Thanks for your response. I agree that viewing a recording of a live meeting is much less intense and appealing for most of us. That said, the numbers of people that view the recordings far outweigh the number of attendees at the live event. It is of course, more convenient.
As far as attendance in the live meeting, I have often found that the amount of interaction within the event itself does not seem to correlate with attendance numbers. It seems more related to the topic, and the efforts of the presenter and the moderator to encourage interaction.