One answer was provided on Sunday when the first movie in the package, "The Shawshank Redemption," attracted the biggest cable audience of the week.

(For CNN's cable audience, each rating point represents about 611,000 homes.)

"This cable audience isn't coming out of the 'Late Show' audience," he said.

The role of Disney and a cable audience on E!

As channel 5 transitioned to an O&O and more independent stations signed on, it lost much of its cable audience.

(And nothing has changed today if you compare the booming cable audiences for wrestling versus, say, those for Bravo.)

In total, UPN averaged a 1.8 Nielsen rating with a 3% share of cable audiences that week.

Monday's premiere of Season 2 brought TNT 8.3 million viewers, the largest cable audience for a scripted series.

"The new terms are the cable audience is almost as large as the broadcast networks' now."

Still, the cable audience is minuscule by network standards.