83 Million People Watched the ‘Hope For Haiti Now’ Telethon

Or at least, watched one minute of it. “At any given time, about 24 million viewers were watching,” reports the Times, good for a cumulative total that, for context, is about one tenth of the audience that tuned into to watch Michael Jackson’s funeral. Still, 83 million is a big number–and so is $57 million, the amount of money the telethon raised. No word on what the exact viewership numbers were in the stunned aftermath of Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Bono’s “Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)”; word is the recording from Friday’s benefit is about to go #1 in the country, so probably ratings were high, even then–shows what we know. [Media Decoder]