Slower Ratings on TV This Season

After suffering most of the season, many network television shows were able to rebound this spring and bring back some of the ratings that they lost during the fall season with the writers' strike. Many of the networks lost between five and twenty percent of their viewers by the end of this season, with Fox the only one coming out on the bright side by bringing in 11 million viewers, up seven percent.

However, the season got off to a bad start from the beginning with hit shows already down eight percent in ratings from the previous year. Later on the networks began to rebound and found new viewers with shows such as Pushing Daisies from ABC. "The season got off to a very good start, but what ended up happening was like a car that started picking up speed and then ran into a wall," said Bill Carroll, director of programming at Katz Television Group, a New York-based consulting firm, to Reuters.

A factor in this lack of viewing, besides the possible effect the writers' strike had on the industry, is that more people are actually watching other channels on their cable TV sets. There are just as many people watching, possibly even more, they're just watching different shows, thought Reuters. "The shows will create a challenge for networks to reintroduce them to the public without the abundant free media that usually accompanies new programs. This is uncharted territory," said John Rash, senior VP at ad agency Campbell Mithun, to Reuters.