Random thought on popularity
When I was up really early (or was it absurdly late?) Sunday morning, trying to finish going through my copy-edited manuscript, I had the radio on (not an uncommon state of things), and American Top 40 was counting up their list of the most popular songs (y'know, that show with Casey Kasem, except now it's some other guy who isn't nearly as good doing the counting and babbling).
Anyway, listening to them counting up to number one, it struck me that, at least with music, most of the biggies don't start off at the top of the chart. They get released, they get air time, they get more air time, and they climb up the lists over a matter of weeks, then they peak, and then start back down, sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
Then I thought about movies (since I list the top genre box-office grossers weekly on SFScope. With movies, the blockbusters open at #1, and then work their way down the charts. With the lesser films, well, they also open at their peak, and only go down (excepting Academy Award nominees, which tend to re-surge after the nominations are announced). But again, as a general rule, movies only move down; songs move up and then down.
Which led me to think about books… and realize I have no idea how they play out on their best-seller lists. I assume it's the song model—climb, peak, fall—rather than the movie "open and drop," but I really don't know.
Anyway, it was an observation. And now I look around for other examples of either chart. Comments?
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ianrandalstrock) wrote,
