My Bad

First published December 18, 2003

By C. W. Oberleitner

In his column Tuesday, C. W. Oberleitner talked about being away from his writing desk for a while. Apparently he was a little rustier than he thought. Here's a correction to Tuesday's column.

Like Jim always says: "If you want to hear from the readers just get your facts wrong about something." And, boy did I blow it with my statement about the size of the population of the metropolitan Orlando, Florida area.

In my last column I stated that the population of metro Orlando was just over 463,000 people. Turns out I had my eyes crossed while reading the report. My source was a break down of the Orlando area population published—using very tiny print I might add—by the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission.

A sharp-eyed reader, Ken Pilcher, who works as a television news producer in Central Florida was the first to catch my error:

Hey again, Chuck!

If you look at that PDF... I think you read it wrong. The 1st chart on the 1st page under 2001 has the 463K number. Unfortunately that's just for ages 0-19.

The total on that same chart for all people is 1.693 million.

Also that study is a bit out of date.... compared to the census figures I cited (which I pulled from Census.gov as I wrote you). Also... the city of Orlando uses a more narrow definition of the metro area than Neilson, Arbitron, and several State & Federal agencies. Driving from Brevard County(not included by Orlando ) takes the same or less time than from parts of Lake & Seminole Counties. (for that matter Polk county is also closer to WDW than either Seminole, Volusia, Most of Lake, etc).

Also keep in mind that Central Florida is home to a lot of College Students snowbirds and retirees. Those people are not included in any population survey... including the census. That always hurts our area when it comes to receiving state and federal funds. (Not to mention all of the infrastructure our governments have to pay for to take care of the tourists).

Anyway... other than that stat, I agree wholeheartedly with your column's perceptions of how DL should not be treated the same as WDW by the company. Let us all hope saner minds will prevail. I know a couple of hundred folks at Feature Animation Florida are hoping so.

Please pass on to Jim... Several good people have been asked to sign secret contracts that would have them stay on as a token FAF workforce... for the studio tour. Essentially it will go back to what it was when it first opened.

All my best!!

Ken

In his earlier message, citing Census.gov figures for central Florida’s population Ken pegs the total metro Orlando population at 5.15 million, with an "M", people. Still, that number is way South of the 19 million figure for Southern California. By the way, the source for that figure comes from our local NBC owned and operated news affiliate.

All I can say in my own defense is that I wasn’t wearing my glasses at the time and the sun was in my eyes and Hill was screaming for another rock to fill the Grand Canyon. You had to be there.

Again please forgive the error. I promise to do better in the future. And, thanks once again to all of you who took the time to write.

C’ya real soon!