The highest rated episode reached more than 11 million viewers, better than the average for most network shows.
Television audiences in general are smaller this time of the year before most network shows have made their fall debuts.
His series wallows in old stereotypes that most network shows would be afraid to go near, even for laughs.
When the highest-rated episode of "The Osbournes" reached more than 11 million viewers -- better than the average for most network shows -- mouths dropped open across the industry.
These comedies are no-nonsense on the topic of money; they dwell on social class, rather than ignore it like most network shows.
Meanwhile, these shows often take just as long to write and shoot, because — unlike on most network shows — an entire season's worth of scripts is written before shooting begins.
It is especially complicated for TV, given that most people already pay for TV through their cable or satellite service — and they can watch most network shows free on streaming sites like Hulu, albeit with advertisements.
"I think network TV is still being dragged kicking and screaming into the realization that they're actually cable TV," he said, citing the small audiences now watching most network shows.
The actual rating for the show — a 2.8 among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers, which Fox defines as a success because of advertiser preference for that group — is not bad in the context of most network shows, especially those that play at 8 p.m. Rather, it is the trend that is alarming for the series.
Most network shows seem afraid of putting a harsh, irritable woman in the lead, so much so that the only place to find one as brusque and friendless as the detective Helen Mirren played so memorably on the British series "Prime Suspect" is deep in the bowels of the medical field, namely the morgue.
Hurwitz said that while Arrested Development was being created for the web, the staff was being paid in the same way they would for most network shows, and the show is being made on a similar budget.
