Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!grw 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