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From: grw@fortune.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: Most Popular Movie - (nf)
Message-ID: <1125@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Jun-83 17:15:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: fortune.1125
Posted: Fri Jun 17 17:15:16 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jun-83 15:25:32 EDT
Lines: 20



	Ah, but the "what other networks are playing" modifier DOES
    have an equivalent in movies.  People will only see so many movies,
    and if a lot of good ones are out at one time (as is the case now),
    some of them will suffer.  Perhaps (for example) War Games would
    outsell ET if RotJ was not pulling away some of War Games' audience.
	I don't think there really is a good objective measurement of
    the "popularity" of a movie or a TV show (you'll never convince me
    that Nielsen's ratings reflect reality),  but number of tickets
    sold does seem to be the best "rule of thumb" for movies.  BTW,
    I think RotJ wins by this standard as well, at least if you take
    into account the length of time the movie has been out.  Perhaps
    the best equation is:
	tickets-sold / days-since-release / size-of-current-market.
    (For our rule-of-thumb judgement, size-of-market could be the
    population of the US).  Using this as a guide, what's the most
    popular movie of all time?  Probably still Return of the Jedi.

						-Glenn