“The performance took place at the Honolulu International Center Arena in Honolulu, Hawaii on January 14, 1973. At 12:30 a.m. Hawaiian time, the concert was beamed live via Globecam Satellite to Australia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, The Philippines, South Vietnam and other countries. It was seen in about forty countries by 1-to-1.5 billion people - A global smash.”
Can this really be true? That between 1 and 1.5 billion people saw it on TV? That’s a really big part of the entire world. The population of the US and UK combined are only about 350 million people.
It’s very hard to quantify global viewing figures today much less trying to do it for an event 30 years ago. I have heard numerous figures with 1 billion being the most common. It’s hard to say. Elvis had (and still does) a huge following in the far east so I would imagine that the numbers may make sense.
Interestingly, he never performed outside of the US due to the immigration status of his manager. He would have been huge in Europe and Japan had he the opportunity to travel.
I can’t add anything to Elvis, and partially this is a bump for those who can. I’ll say this though: The phrasing makes it seem very possible: *seen in 40 countries * - does this mean that there was a clip on the Indian National news seen by, say 200 million people and that is counted toward the total? Or are they saying an average of 25,000,000 people in 40 countries actually watched for a few minutes? Either seems possible and/or reasonable – although it obviously makes a great deal of substantive difference which it was.
Either way I am not sure how the population of Britain and the US enter into it – Many American & British Rock N Roll acts, incl in this case Elvis, have always had a world wide audience and still do today… unless the OP was using it as point of comparison – that I get.
Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis. Twice a year, on the anniversary of his death and on his birthday we are visited by numerous fans. The majority of these from outside the U.S. are Brits and Japanese. This is after the man has been dead a quarter of a century. :eek: