"It's still a loss leader for Showtime," said Mr. Lefcourt, who suggests the series's new time period, on Tuesday evenings, should improve viewership.
Distressed from a long stretch of poor ratings, NBC executives placed pressure on Homicide: Life on the Street producers to improve its viewership and become more popular than its higher-rated time-slot competitor, Nash Bridges.
On NBC viewership improved slightly for "The Jay Leno Show" (6.8 million), as the network finished in third place.
That performance, combined with a show that was revived after he returned from having bypass heart surgery, helped improved Letterman's viewership.
Even in Canada, where the figures improved as the Cup race went on, overall viewership was down 18% over the first three games of the final round.
A consortium of media owners, advertisers and media agencies says it is pleased with the results of two pilot tests, commissioned more than a year ago, that are intended to help improve and modernize the way video viewership habits are measured — all the better to cash in on those new habits.
"We are aware of this improving environment and expect much of our viewership to come from mobile," he said.
But if Facebook really wants to stimulate original content sharing, it needs to improve its creation tools, not just boost viewership.
"The basic reason for doing this is to improve the position of the Academy Awards with regard to ratings and viewership," Mr. Pavlik said.
Granted, it's a different time and it's certainly a different market but hypothetically, when the economy improves, the networks are in position to take back some of the viewership they lost to niche cable channels.
