For most Americans, the biggest concerns over the past few months may have been to keep their BBQ hot and their beer cool. But as it now turns out, television network bosses may have instead spent this summer worrying where their viewers went.

According to an article by Josef Adalian in trade paper Variety, this summer so far broadcast networks have lost of 10% of their audience compared to last year. This stands in sharp contrast to the past regular season, during which hits such as Desperate Housewives and Lost seemed to bring about a renaissance for broadcast television, and is also surprising considering the early success of shows such as Dancing With The Stars and Hell's Kitchen. However, besides these two shows there have been precious few new reality shows that were not complete flop -- as one network insider told Variety, "there was too much reality, and most of it sucked."

Viewers have also not shown a great deal of interest in drama this summer. Fox's CSI-like The Inside barely registered on the ratings radar, and a similar fate befell ABC's Empire, co-directed by CSI: Miami's Greg Yaitanes. Repeats of established shows fared better, but not as well as last year. For instance, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit held on to only 48% of its audience from the regular season, compared to 66% last summer. For CSI, only 42% of the regular season audience tuned in this summer, down from 48% last year.

But even though Variety characterised both Law & Order and CSI as "showing signs of age," not all is lost. All three CSI shows this summer still performed far better than most other network shows, and usually ended up at the top of the ratings charts. As for the rest of the networks' ratings woes, they could simply be the result of an underwhelming schedule this year, rather than a real trend away from broadcast television. According to Variety's network insider, much of this year's summer programming "felt like burnoff. It seemed like it was just sitting around rather than made for summer."

And who knows, maybe viewers really did prefer their BBQs to seeing Gil Grissom solve a case to which they already know the outcome. That's fine in a summer like last year, which was one of the coolest on record, but not quite as attractive in a summer that's consisted of heat wave after heat wave in many regions. What qualifies as a good summer for most people, simply may not be for television networks.

For the original Variety report, please follow this link (registration required).

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