Well, he’s a rather well known award winning author, not TV. A number of his books have been adpated for film, such as Stardust and* Coraline*.
And I do relate the two to an extent. For example, I expect any intelligent person to *know who *Robert Heinlein is, even if they don’t read SF. Now, sure- to be able to name all his books and discuss film adaptations veers past simple cultural literacy towards geekness. I expect them to *know who *Ang Lee is, who Ringo Starr is, and so forth. That’s just part of being well read.