User blog comment:Lotstar/Is iCarly Being Dragged On For Too Long?/@comment-2032682-20120513085023/@comment-2032682-20120513180846

What links? The ratings you just posted support it.

Season 3 averaged 5.75 million.

Season 4 averaged 5.8 million.

Season 5 (Seddie arc) averaged 4.35 million

25% (so I was out slighty) drop from Season 4 to Season 5.

Season 6 is averaging 3.2 million. 45% drop. Again slightly out but consistent.

There is fallacy distributed by Seddie fans that somehow iCarly's ratings were already dropping when the Seddie arc happened.

The numbers do not support this at all. Season 4 was the best rated series in the show's history.

So, no, I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that Seddie made the show lose so much of its audience when the numbers were not drastically different from the previous set of episodes.

The 4 part Seddie arc cost the show 1.5 million viewers. That's cold fact.

Viewers dropped off during the Seddie arc.

The numbers indicate people gave the show a final chance or two, with iQ, only to get a failed and boring single-Carly subplot, and then iBloop 2 which is one of the most pointless episodes ever made.

Nick pulled out all the stops to advertise the unwanted iStill Psycho sequal episode, and it blipped the ratings as mass advertising usually does, it wasn't an especially brilliant episode and the show tailspinned.

If you want to believe Seddie hasn't done damage to iCarly's brand and ratings, go ahead, but the numbers don't back you up.

Seddie happening was obviously the straw that broke the camel's back for many people.

It's happened to me in the past with shows I'm not that interested in.

I stopped watching the Simpsons just one random day when a single joke basically made me decide "That's it, it's not worth wasting my time on any longer."

Tomorrow's episode of Gossip Girl might cause me to stop watching it, depending on the outcome. I don't care enough about the other storylines, and there's one storyline if mishandled will be the end for me.

There are more factors to this than just Seddie, but it's clearly the strongest one.