This resulted in a watered-down "Murder One" and ratings so abysmal that only two cases made it onto the air.

Placed on Friday nights, the show had abysmal ratings at first.

Despite its illustrious history, the station's rock format foundered on a recent record of abysmal ratings.

This year, with most of its movies drawing abysmal ratings, NBC may broadcast as few as 10 original films.

Reacting to the abysmal ratings of last year's pageant, ABC has decided to cut its broadcast from three hours to two.

LET me begin by saying that I don't buy all this talk about the abysmal ratings for the N.B.A. finals.

The network more than makes up for its abysmal ratings by charging an inflated ad rate for those few viewers its shows manage to attract.

Trivial Pursuit: America Plays replaced Temptation on a majority of stations that carried it, and inherited its predecessor's abysmal ratings.

And it has had mostly abysmal ratings since.