Sports: This includes mostly baseball and football, since they seem to get the most TV coverage. The nets are paying extraordinary amounts of money to keep the sports on their station, but is it worth it? Well, no. For starters, the World Series has been a disappointment for years now, with nets praying for at least a sixth game for the series to break even. Last year, Fox got lucky with Game 7 of the New York-Arizona match. It drew over 39mil viewers, This year's game seven between San Francisco and Anaheim didn't even crack 30mil. I know that it gives Fox valuable time to promo its show, but the network has even admitted that to have a new show air for two weeks then take four weeks off can kill it. The others nets, meanwhile, get a leg up. My guess is that come negotiations next time around, Fox will think long and play some "hardball."

          As for Football, the networks continue to shell out more than a billion dollars a year for the rights. While the playoffs are definitely worth it, and the Super Bowl is still tv's event of the year, every year, the regular season games just aren't paying off. ABC recently got its affiliates to cough up $30 million dollars are game for Monday Night Football, making the cast of "Friends" look downright cheap in comparison. And what does it get? A three hour block every Monday night for about 4 months that averages a little over 16mil viewers, and falling. NBC averages about 21mil every Thursday for a three hour block and pays only 20mil. You do that math.
 

60 Minutes: This is the only show, ever, to be atop the Nielsen ratings for four decades. But the last time it accomplished that feat was in 1992, and now tv's premiere newsmag is out of the top 20 all together. Last Sunday it fell to 12.8mil viewers and "Dateline," which airs against it most weeks, actually drew more viewers under 50, where it counts. The old gray mare just aint what it used to be.

Frasier: Though NBC's website continues to promo it every week, bragging over any small win it might have, the fact is that this very expensive show is falling fast. It started out the season with 21mil viewers, but over the last two week its averaged just 12.6mil viewers and a 5.0 rating in adults, both series lows. NBC pays about $5.5mil an episode for the show, paying 43 cents a viewer. Compared to "Friends" at 22 cents, that's shockingly horrible.

CBS Sunday Movie: CBS is trying something different this year- coming in dead last every Sunday night. The Sunday night movie was America's favorite Sunday pastime in the late 90's, with some movies breaking 25mil. Now it struggles to get above 10mil, doing so only twice this season. CBS- look at the other nets. Dramas on Sunday are the new wave.