Who stole six million viewers?

This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. Some of these viewers are now watching cable programming. Others are still watcging broadcast TV, but on their own terms -- using TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline. The mystery, then, is what the networks should do now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12ratings.html?ref=toda...
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