Not o kill joy the collective mood - but the result of low ratings has little to do with the conservatives striking back and Nightline or This Week - butthe fact that the ABC network's weak ratings of its lead ins. David Letterman also suffered from this at CBS - also - Disney which owns ABC is not promoting the shows to its affiliates - Disney wants to scrap Nightline and go for a its own late night talk show. Lastly, network ratings -while still far larger than cable TV are slipping all the time due to competing mediums like the Internet and video games. All the networks want to get out of the news business - news broadcasts being something they had to have during regulation but no longer required.
"All the networks want to get out of the news business"
At least they want to do the right thing.