With more channels to choose from, the networks' audiences will decline.
Nielsen said the 56.5 million viewer figure was the sum of nine networks' audiences.
During the 1,210 hours of Olympics coverage across the NBC Universal networks, audiences were exposed to 13,000 to 14,000 commercials.
But the networks' audiences have dwindled, while cable channels, repeating the same show several times a week, can clock up large cumulative ratings.
To make matters worse, as digital sets become less expensive and more common, digital TV threatens a continuing fragmentation of the networks' audiences because it will effectively quintuple the number of channels available to the consumer.
From the knowledge networks' audiences' point of view, evaluation of a network where the members consist of caregivers, policymakers, and researchers, network analysis should cover two dimensions: network dimensions (network width, network components, and implementation site), and knowledge exchange dimension (exchange of knowledge, context of exchange, and facilities of exchange) [ 24].
Night 2 of the Republican convention, covered in part by NBC, CBS and ABC, drew a network audience of 15.1 million people.
The narrative was crosshatched with mini-narratives, requiring a network audience to pay close attention — something generally demanded only of cable viewers.
But Wednesday night's network audience was smaller than the 16.5 million who watched Al Gore accept the nomination for vice president at the 1996 Democratic convention.
If the mass network audience that still gathers for the Big Three disperses, might not the niche alternatives, like cable news channels and newspapers, inherit the earth?
