The O.C. Continues To Sink

It's a bad, bad world for denizens of Newport Beach. The last minute FOX schedule reshuffle designed to spark up interest in the fading series did not work out.

3,53 million people tuned into an all-new episode of "The O.C." last night ("Gringos"), on a par with last week's horrid numbers on Thursday, November 2. The teen drama has lost over 4 million viewers since last year's season premiere and they do not seem to be coming back. If FOX keeps the soap on Wednesday for next week, it might actually improve as Lost concluded its fall run, but there is now very little hope for the once red-hot drama.

Of course there was very strong competition on other networks as ABC aired its fall finale of Lost that beat CBS's Criminal Minds in the 18-49 category, but failed to post superior numbers in overall viewers (17,1 vs. 17,54 mil). Nevertheless, the drama got a little bump from its season average numbers as it left for a winter hiatus.

Speaking of which, Lost whose average numbers this season are close to 17 million viewers is actually doing much better than last year when it scored an average of 15,5 mil. The only problem is that the drama opened the 2nd season in September 2005 at almost 23 mil. So, the recently highly publicized decline actually occurred last year.

Farewell to Joey Lawrence on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" was the evening's most watched program. The results show nabbed 20,64 million viewers.