In one of Beale's rants he cites that statistic for the American public. Does anybody know if that is accurate? (I would have guessed it was slightly higher.)
He also mentions 15% as the statistic for newspaper readers. That has certainly gone down since 1976, and probably hasn't been replaced one-for-one by Internet news sites.
That 3% figure stuck out to me as well. I wouldn't know a good source to check to see how accurate it is.
shareI doubt that Howard Beale bothered with fact-checkers!
shareWhile it's possible that the statistic may be factually off a bit, emotionally & culturally it's right on target. Not just then, but even more so now.
shareAccording to a quick google search *ahem*, Pew research says that 72% of Americans reported reading at least one book in 2014, down from 2011's 79%. No, 3% was most likely not accurate for the time.
Pew also reports that newspaper reading was 23% as of 2012.
Remember the theme of that scene: Television is not real. Television is an illusion.
"But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell."
One could argue that the reason for the BS numbers was an attempt to use the power of the illusion for good in this instance.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
[spoilers]
Interesting idea, especially considering that Beale turns out to be an unreliable prophet in the end. He is completely "flipped" by CCA Chairman Arthur Jensen. It is possible that Beale's supposed idealism is itself an illusion and he is completely unhinged by the power of his TV role. As Jensen says to him, "I hear you are a madman."
Here's an article from The Atlantic, published January 21, 2014:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/
And one from Huffington Post, published October 7, 2013:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/american-read-book-poll_n_4045937.html