For three of television's most popular new serial dramas, absence apparently made viewers' hearts grow cold.
NBC's "Heroes," ABC's "Lost" and CBS' "Jericho" all returned from lengthy hiatuses recently to find a significant part of their audiences gone.
"Heroes" was seen by just under 12 million people in its return, according to Nielsen Media Research. Although that clearly established the freshman drama as NBC's most popular show, it's down from the season's 14.7 million viewer average.
"Lost" had 11.9 million viewers last week, a sharp fall from the season average of 15.1 million, Nielsen said. "Jericho" was CBS' most pleasant surprise this season, but the 7.6 million people who watched last week was down 2 million from its average.
To be fair, each of the shows now faces stiffer competition than earlier this year. But the results are likely to affect how networks schedule these dramas in the future. Since viewers don't like the narratives broken up by repeats or by extended breaks, more will probably be scheduled like Fox's "24." That show doesn't start its season until January and runs straight through to the end in May.
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Here are the rankings for national prime-time network television last week (April 23-29) as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are 283.5 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions.
*--* Program Network Viewers
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*--* 1 American Idol (Wed.) FOX 26.93 2 American Idol (Tue.) FOX 26.55 3 House (Tue.) FOX 20.80 4 CSI CBS 20.20 5 Grey's Anatomy (Thu.) ABC 20.08
6 Dancing With the Stars (Mon.) ABC 18.87 7 Desperate Housewives ABC 17.17 8 CSI: Miami CBS 17.02 9 Dancing With the Stars Results (Tue.) ABC 16.56 10 NCIS CBS 14.17
11 Shark CBS 14.10 12 Survivor: Fiji CBS 13.83 13 Without a Trace CBS 13.71 14 King of Queens CBS 12.63 15 Two and a Half Men CBS 12.27
16 Cold Case (Sun.) CBS 12.14 17 Heroes NBC 11.96 18 Lost (10 p.m.) ABC 11.86 19 CSI: NY CBS 11.40 20 Brothers & Sisters ABC 11.15
21 60 Minutes CBS 10.98 Deal or No Deal (Mon.) NBC 10.98 23 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition ABC 10.72 24 24 FOX 10.41 25 Numb3rs CBS 10.14
26 Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? FOX 10.13 27 The Unit CBS 9.83 28 Criminal Minds CBS 9.75 29 Ugly Betty ABC 9.62 30 Boston Legal ABC 9.54
