Yeah, we’re as surprised as you are. Sort of.

Neilsen reports that primetime viewership during the November -February strike went down 6.1% on network television, but overall television usage went up .5%. So, folks weren’t watching primetime, but they were watching more TV.

Looking back on the strike period, we aren’t remembering a lot of family board games or even books we read, business did just kind of continue as usual (if it didn’t increase while trying to find enough stories every day to keep the site interesting).

The funny thing is that the ratio between original shows and syndicated content shifted only 6.5%, almost the exact same amount as the viewership decrease.

Surprise TV Execs! People are smart. They found out when their shows were going to air, when they were going to start repeating and tuned in for what they wanted to.

The rest of us fled to the internet, basic cable (a 1.4% jump), DVDs (+17.4%), and video games (+37.5%).

You’re not reading the stats wrong, people actually watched MORE TV during the WGA strike, but didn’t watch their favorite Primetime shows after they went into reruns. The public also found time to give a big boost to alternative television media with a respectable bump in DVDs and a relatively substantial bump in video games.

Looks like all that Halo 3 we played to pass the hours paid off…in statistics!

Now if only we could use those stats to pick up women somehow…