My “something is wrong with this” senses are all red lining on this story. I smell manipulated statistics or apples and oranges comparison.
Who aired the I love lucy? Broadcast or cable?
Broadcast when the choices were all of 3 channels.
CBS is broadcast.
CBS. They colorized the episodes and ran them in prime time. Production costs were absorbed 60+ years ago; all of the actors are dead (except for Little Ricky), and their residual payments ended years ago. Probably the cheapest prime time program aired in years; I wonder what sort of audience CBS promised and if they charged their usual ad rates for a Sunday evening, when viewership is higher than most weeknights.
I personally thought the Lucy episodes would flop—only because everyone over 40 has seen them dozens of time. But when you compare it to the junk that’s on other channels, it’s little wonder that a lot of people turned to Lucy.
IIRC, they were promoted before hand in news articles.