Recent Blog Posts
-
The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:04am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
Apr 27 20098:04am EDT -
Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
Apr 26 200910:04am EDT -
Be Your Own Counterfeiter
Apr 26 20099:04am EDT -
Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:04pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
Apr 25 20099:04am EDT -
What Good is the News?
Apr 25 20098:04am EDT -
Stressful Enough
Apr 24 20092:04pm EDT -
Not Regretting the Pound
Apr 24 20091:04pm EDT -
Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
Non-Economic Questions of the Day
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
The Stress Test Blind Alley
Apr 24 20098:04am EDT -
Happy Hour
Apr 23 20099:04pm EDT -
Recovery Without Rebalancing
Apr 23 20096:04pm EDT -
The Shape of Your Recession
Apr 23 20095:04pm EDT
Links
- Felix Salmon
- DealBreaker
- Ryan Avent: The Bellows
- The Epicurean Dealmaker
- Chris Anderson
- Ultimi Barbarorum
- MarketBeat
- Michelle Leder
- John Quiggin
- The Panelist
- Andrew Leonard
- Streetsblog
- Brad Setser
- Michael Mandel
- Financial Crookery
- Kash Mansori
- Dean Baker
- Calculated Risk
- Free Exchange
- Curbed
- Lance Knobel
- Econospeak
- Carbon Tax Center
- Overcoming Bias
- Mark Thoma
- Naked Capitalism
- Alphaville
- Barry Ritholtz
- Alexander Campbell
- The Bayesian Heresy
- Brad DeLong
- DealBook
- Greg Mankiw
- Deal Journal
- FP Passport
- Carl Bialik
- Marginal Revolution
- A Fistful of Euros
- Dan Gross
Four Billion
The NYT brings out the big numbers for its Olympic coverage today:
At 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month in the year 2008 -- eight being a lucky number in China -- the world looked toward Beijing and the 91,000 people inside the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest. The global television audience was estimated to surpass four billion viewers, though in the United States, the opening ceremonies were not carried live.
The audience inside the stadium I'm sure is right. The audience outside is, if you'll excuse me, utter crap.
Dan Radosh, in 2005, demolished the idea that the Oscars are watched by one billion people -- and in doing so he reckoned that the maximum potential television audience for any event couldn't be more than two billion.
The ceremony still hasn't been seen by a single person in the USA, and it was held at just about the most audience-unfriendly time imaginable as far as Europe is concerned. Plus, it's a ceremony, not a major sporting event. Does anyone seriously imagine that over half the world's population is going to stop what they're doing to watch some kind of synchronized son et lumière show? I'm not going to see a minute of it, and no one I know is going to watch it either.
I have no idea how many people will actually end up watching the ceremony: I suppose it's conceivable that it might break the 100 million mark, worldwide. But a billion? No. And four billion? Fuhgeddaboudit.
(HT: Free Exchange)
