Oh yes they could — and they have. In a year in which NBC’s new corporate owner, Comcast, significantly increased the budget for fall shows, the ratings have continued to slide even as competitors have had success.

How bad are NBC’s prime-time ratings? Bad enough that most of the hours on NBC’s schedule, other than the potent “Sunday Night Football” package, have regressed in ratings this season. While every other network has generated a new hit, NBC, which needs hits the most, has not.

The already fourth-place rating in the financially crucial area of viewers ages 18 to 49 has dropped on average 11 percent, to a 2.5 (3.1 million) this year, from 2.8 (3.57 million viewers) last year. NBC has also lost more than 800,000 total viewers from last season. Several new shows never got off the ground, like “The Playboy Club” and “Free Agents,” both of which have been canceled.

It’s bad enough that without the big ratings supplied by the N.F.L. (which costs NBC more than $600 million a year to buy) NBC would be struggling to stay out of fifth place in the ratings. Without football, NBC is now tied with the Spanish-language network Univision in those 18-49 ratings.

To make the grim matters even worse, the only prime-time shows NBC previously owned that posted consistently good numbers, the comedy “The Office,” the drama “Law Order: Special Victims Unit” and the reality show “The Biggest Loser” are all down significantly this season. Not coincidentally, important cast members have left all three shows.

NBC was not the crown jewel in Comcast’s $13.75 billion purchase of NBC Universal early this year, but there were hopes inside the company and among investors that the new owners might begin to revive the once-mighty network’s moribund prime-time schedule and attract more ad dollars.

So far at least, the opposite has happened. In September, the new chief executive of NBC, Stephen B. Burke, told a media conference in California, “No network has ever been as far behind financially as NBC is,” citing prices for prime-time commercials that are consistently 20 percent less than what its competitors can charge advertisers.

Comcast’s chief executive, Brian L. Roberts, did not even mention the network on Comcast’s earnings call with investors last week. Instead he raved about the health of the NBC Universal cable channels, which drive the profitability of the division. Those cable assets increased revenues by 12 percent, to $2.1 billion.

Robert Seidman, the co-editor of TV by the Numbers, a ratings Web site, said Comcast “knew what it was buying and knew what it was getting with the broadcast network.”

But the network Comcast bought had several pillars outside of prime time — the “Today” show, “The Tonight Show” and “Nightly News” — that had weathered the storm. Lately, there have been concerns inside the network that even those stalwarts might finally be subject to fallout from prime time’s underperformance. One senior news executive, who asked not to be identified commenting on the entertainment division, said, “Prime time is painful.”

But for the moment at least, those concerns are more about shrinking leads over competitors than shrinking audiences. “Today,” which hasn’t lost a week in the ratings in almost 16 years, has maintained its audience (even adding to it slightly) this season, though the No. 2 show, ABC’s “Good Morning America” had added more viewers and closed what was once a yawning gap to just a sizable one. ABC has also inched closer in the evening news ratings, though NBC has added viewers to that top-rated program as well.

In late night, which traditionally has a closer relationship to prime-time ratings, some impact is noticeable. “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, which enjoyed more than 15 years of dominance over CBS’s “Late Show With David Letterman” (not counting the period of upheaval when Conan O’Brien replaced Mr. Leno), has fallen behind CBS four weeks out of the first six this season in those 18-49 ratings — the first time that has happened since 1994.

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