If you were to believe the report by Worldscreen, citing an "Interpret" survey on the response of Americans to the strike by the Writers Guild of America, you'd be made to think the industry was about to collapse.
The major problem I have with the assertions of the article relate to the wild idea that 94 percent of Americans are aware of the Writers Guild of America strike against the studios, and another 55 percent are aware of the issues involved.
What is then asserted, is 56 percent of Americans support the writers, only 7 percent the producers, and 37 percent didn't care either way.
The problem is right at the end of the article they say the sample tested was 1,013 people, but here's the kicker: they were Americans aged 18-49. Another caveat, it was an online survey.
What's wrong with that? Nothing, if you were to say that from the beginning in connection with the assertions made.
The issue at hand is they say 94 percent of Americans are aware of the Writers strike, and then go ahead with revealing the percentages mentioned above.
By their own admission, their sampling was only from those aged 18-49. That means even though those aged 50 or over weren't included, the statement is made that 94 percent of Americans are aware of the strike, and the vast majority support it. While that may be true, the numbers and percentages mentioned are simply made up. All Americans would minimally have to include a sampling of adults across all age groups.
The other thing that skews the numbers, is there's not a person that doesn't know in general, the younger a group of people are, the more they'll go against anything considered mainstream, regardless of the market they represent.
For example, Google (GOOG) used to be the darling of the media and younger crowd, as everybody knows. Now they've been losing their favor for some time, and are being called "evil" be many of their former supporters.
So if you only include a sampling of people from the ages of 18-49, you will always have a more liberal, anti-establishment view coming out. It's simply how younger people are.
Concerning it being an online survey, you already have even less reliability in the results. If the same number of people had been asked via a phone survey, the numbers would have been far different in my opinion.
I have no problem with the idea that people will change their viewing habits with a smaller number of new shows to view, especially the core TV fan. I do have a problem with throwing out numbers based upon a sampling of 18-49-year-olds over the Internet. Those numbers will also reflect something different than the general population, no matter what you ask them.
This survey is completely flawed, and the answers I heard from it are so in line with the thinking of the Writers Guild, that it can't be taken seriously. I'm not sure why someone trying to build trust in this vital area would put out something like this.
What are your thoughts on it?
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