I generally enjoy David Carr’s media columns in The New York Times. But I was puzzled by this in yesterday’s column:

On the phone last Friday, Mr. Cates, 73, sounded confounded and quietly angry that the sparkle, the illusion that holds aloft a $500 billion global industry and drives much of Los Angeles, could all but dissipate as the business of the business grinds along in public view.

What $500 billion global industry? Hollywood’s domestic box office is expected to fall just short of $10 billion this year, a record without adjusting for inflation. PricewaterhouseCooper’s reckon the global media and entertainment industry will be $1.8 trillion by 2010, but filmed entertainment accounts for only slightly more than $100 billion of that. A chunk of that sum doesn’t come from Hollywood in any case. Television networks are another $220 billion or so, and perhaps they need some of that sparkle.

But I can’t figure out how to get to $500 billion by any calculation.