Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as they appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show
on Monday
(http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090826-tows-aish-rai-ab-bachchan)
It seems silly to quibble with Oprah Winfrey over facts but I am going to do it anyway. This morning Oprah had Indian movie star couple Abhishek and Aishwarya, whom she described as “the world’s most famous couple.” That’s not the kind of “fact” I would bother to contest because it is neither here nor there. One cannot easily prove or disprove such claims.
However, when Oprah quantifies their fan base to be five billion people I begin to choke. Even hyperbole is not so stretchable. Let me put some factual context around this figure. As of today the world population stood at 6,787,073,257, according to the US Census Bureau. Going by what the Oprah Winfrey Show claims out of these 5,000,000,000 are fans of Abhishek and Aishwarya. That means practically nine out of every ten people on every continent are fans of the couple. Purely statistically speaking, from a child writhing in starvation pangs in Rwanda in Africa to a suicide bomber strapping explosives on his body along Pakistan-Afghanistan border is a fan of the two in their spare time. I am sure when I put it like that you begin to see the absurdity of such a claim.
I have a problem when shows that make tens of millions of dollars display such laziness about facts. Here is another, albeit it trivial, example of that. The accompanying introduction to the star couple also said, “This booming, Hindi-language film industry turns out hundreds of vibrant films and musicals every year.” Not true. The Hindi-language film industry makes less than 200 films a year. The figure of hundreds of films relates to everything that India produces in all its languages put together.
For that matter even the claim that Aishwarya makes $15 million a movie is questionable. According to those who track such payments in the Indian context she could not be making more than $5 million a film. They say even Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, two of India’s highest paid movie stars, do not make $15 million a movie.
One question to self: WTF am I doing factchecking a TV show on a Monday morning?