Cable networks’ viewing audience increases in 2004

Cable TV continued to chip away at the broadcast networks this year, but a handful of new hits, including ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” and CBS’ “CSI: NY,” helped ease the erosion among valuable young-adult viewers.

Overall viewership for the six networks is down 4 percent this season, compared with a 3 percent loss last year. But among 18- to 49-year-olds, viewing is down only 1 percent, compared with a 7 percent plunge last season, according to an analysis of Nielsen Media Research data.

Cable is up 7 percent, compared to a 5 percent gain last season; the biggest increase is among adults 50 and older.

But cable’s increase also was sparked by a 2 percent jump in overall TV usage, which is at historic highs. The average viewer spends 31 hours a week in front of the tube, nearly three hours more than in 1999.

There’s only one prime-time slot in which cable hasn’t grown this season: Sundays at 9. That’s where “Desperate Housewives” has steamrolled the competition to become the biggest instant hit in years.

Despite the loss of “Friends” this season, “more appointment television shows are on now,” CBS’ David Poltrack says.

But as much as those shows boost network fortunes, cable channels rely on their own defining hits and suffer without them. The decline of “Trading Spaces” hammered TLC, which is down 23 percent this year.

“Networks that rely on one thing to drive their growth need to quickly find other things to sustain that growth or it goes away,” Turner research chief Jack Wakshlag says. He says Bravo (up 20 percent) faces similar hurdles as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” cools.

But Spike was up 13 percent thanks to new reruns of “CSI,” TV’s top series. USA, with three top original series, was up 21 percent. Comedy Central rose sharply (29 percent) thanks to “Chappelle’s Show” and other series.

And A&E, with no overall growth, gained 34 percent among young adults as the channel traded its cultural roots for reality fare such as “Growing Up Gotti” and “Dog, the Bounty Hunter.”

Without 2003’s heightened war coverage, news channels CNN (down 22 percent) and MSNBC (down 15 percent) lost viewers, although Fox News was down a slight 3 percent.

Fox News logged 11 of the top 12 cable news shows, led by “The O’Reilly Factor.” The only non-Fox show to crack that list is CNN’s “Larry King Live.”