The Iron Yuppie

I was browsing through some clippings and came across a great piece from the NewYorker titled "One Billion". Basically, they look at the number that constantly gets thrown around at the Oscars about how a billion people supposedly tune in. But the number is just absurd! Daniel Radosh goes through some great basic math... the number basically assumes that 15% of the world's population watches (equivalent to the % of people who watch here in the US). But he quickly goes on to show that the most generous world wide audience figure could only be about 2 billion (number of TVs, number who can get broadcasts, etc). 15% of that number is only 300 million. And even further, there's no reason to think that the Oscars has anywhere near 15% of the world wide audience... we're not unique in our worship of celebrity culture here in the US, but we certainly lead the pack. One can pretty safely assume that everyone else has less than 15% viewership (the article quoted that of China's huge population, only 1% tuned in).

I would like to request that reporters begin to call anyone who says this stuff on it. It's so simple! Just say "where did you get that figure from"? When they stumble around, you can quote them as stumbling around, and, presto, great story.