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Get this: of the top seven WB shows, Angel was the ONLY ONE that posted a gain this year. Its overall ratings were up 8%. That’s not super-huge, but it’s fairly significant for a show in its fifth season. The other six all dove, some precipitously. 7th Heaven dropped 15%. Smallville plummeted by a stunning 25% from last year. Everwood and Charmed both dropped 4%. Reba lost 11%. And critical darling Gilmore Girls went down 21%. For an even more shocking number, the final episode this year posted almost 1.5 million more viewers than normal; stunningly the numbers for the finale even beat the numbers for the finale of its parent show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Clearly, something was going on here.
The only thing that seems to make any sense at all is the fact that The WB blanched because they had to pay a bit more for the show, since it was a 20th Century Fox production. Still, increased ratings, word-of-mouth, and the ability to sell product are usually seen as desirable things. The fact that UPN didn’t pick up Angel they way they did with Buffy (which was not cancelled, but rather, moved) has more to do with the fact that UPN lost money on the Buffy manuever and is busy pissing away cash on the swiftly sinking Enterprise (all I need to say there is "Alien Nazis"; didn’t Roddenberry already beat the fuck out of that dead horse once?).

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Originally posted by est120:
i think it just goes to show that critical acclaim does not make a show good to the public. there are lots of other "critically acclaimed" shows on other networks that get second and third lives because of that but ratings are still low. if entertainment is truly a business, then, as a network, why do you care that critics love your shows. should they not care that the public watches them and therefore making advertisers want to buy airtime? certainly, having a show that is both a critical and popular success is ideal, but look at some of the longer running shows on TV and not all of them are particularly GOOD shows from an artistic standpoint but they were popular and that is how they lasted.

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