Like many people in Austin, I went to see “Borat,” the crass cross-cultural comedy.

It’s possibly the funniest movie of all time – but this isn’t a review. The point is that I had to go to three different theaters before I could find a place that wasn’t completely sold out; and I got one of the very last tickets.

The reason for this is partially because “Borat” was supposed to open-wide on two thousand theaters, but it was eventually cut back to 837 theaters, because Fox executives called it “soft on awareness.”

"A tracking survey Monday by National Research Group showed that 27% of respondents were aware of "Borat," well behind two competitors opening the same weekend. Of those surveyed, 81% were aware of Walt Disney Co.'s "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause" and 50% were aware of DreamWorks Animation SKG's "Flushed Away," to be released through Paramount Pictures."

“Borat,” as you may know by now, is the #1 grossing movie this weekend, its opening, handily beating “Santa Clause 3” and “Flushed Away.” It made $26,375,000 in 837 theaters.

Think about that for a moment. Assuming a rough estimate of 8 dollars a ticket, 16 shows per screen over the weekend, “Borat” sold about 250 tickets per showing. I have no idea what the average movie theater seating capacity is, but I’ll bet you it’s around 250.

People – potential paying customers – who wanted to see “Borat” were turned away in Austin, and likely around the country. In the world of networking, we call this an unexpected demand of resources.

Fox probably calls it lost revenue.

And while Fox’s answers to the L.A. Times said that tracking can be unreliable, it seems they relied a bit too heavily on that sole “soft on awareness” metric. It just didn’t give Fox’s executives the information that they needed to accurately judge their screen need. Sure, only 27% of people might know what “Borat” is, but those 27% were obviously motivated to see the movie, compared to the 81% who knew about “Santa Clause 3” – but merely knew about it. You can't rely on just one metric; you need multiple and varied data points. This is equally true when managing your network for application performance.