Question about Aloha and the countries that saw it?

[likethebike]

The debate over the viewership of Aloha reminds me of an episode of Taxi where the Bobby character finally lands a big job. on a TV show. Bobby teases his friends with his prospective salary on the show and asks them to guess what it is. His one friends guesses something like $100,000 a week. Bobby lets his friend's know that almost no one in television makes that kind of company. (This is circa 1982.) Bobby then reveals the real figure, something like $1500 a week. When his friends hear this they're disappointed "Ohhh...." The salary the character was making was probably eight ten times what he made driving a cab, yet his friends are disappointed because his friend set expectations at $100,000 a week.

The same thing can be seen with Aloha and with Elvis' record sales. The real number was probably a stupendous figure, but because the one billion figure was placed in our minds, anything short feels like a disappointment. Yet without that overstatement, the figure would be mind boggling.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the figure was for all the broadcasts combined. I think the 1.5 billion figure was total potential viewership. I think that in its time, on its own, was a fairly audacious as the satellite technology was fairly new. Although, it was dishonest from its start because the show was sold in its time as simultaneous worldwide broadcast. I'm sure the satellite broadcast in Asia was a big deal. Ironically, we've found out in the year's since that the simultaneous worldwide broadcast is kind of overrated because when it's nine p.m. in one country it could be 3 a.m. in another country. Today when we actually have worldwide simultanous broadcasts does anyone pop out of bed at 3 a.m. to check out, say the Super Bowl, other than Americans who are out of the country at that moment.

[Francesc]

Actually there are many people who watch the Super Bowl. There are also many watching the NBA games, not 1 billion thou.