Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Everything under The Sun

'40 Million see historic Ashes victory on TV' (The Sun, 24/8/09)

The first reaction is 'Wow, forty million - that's almost two-thirds of the population!" - which is the reaction they want you to have, and want you to repeat to your mates down the pub.

Read the whole article though, and you find that 'forty million' was the total worldwide audience, which, although quite impressive, really doesn't justify the sort of prominence given to it by the Sun. After all, in a cricket obsessed nation like India, with a population in the billions, there must be millions of fans who would tune in to watch any live cricket, let alone an Ashes decider.

In fact the total British TV audience was only 1.92 million. They didn't mention that.

I wonder why?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But don't forget everyone who doesn't subscribe to sky got 30 minutes of highlights every night on Channel 5....

Tony.T said...

We get the same inflated reportage here for every "Big event!"

The Melbourne Cup, aussie rules grand final, rugby league grand final, grand prix, Commonwealth games, you name it.

"Five billion people are watching us world wide!"

Yeah, right.