Exactly, I was just telling you from their side of the debate but I'm with you, they should've been found another way to monetize their shows.
They have found other ways, i.e. selling foreign pre-sales for international audiences, standard video on demand with distributors, streaming services, etc...
What some people don't seem to realize is that television by and large is corporate welfare. Hit shows pay for the shows that fail, primarily to keep people employed and the town (or towns) working. There are more television shows than ever before, especially for scripted TV. However, if you have the opinion that networks can put stupid shyt like Imaginary Mary (where the lead is talking to a stuffed animal) for six seasons, well you're going to have a problem.
Think about Empire for a second. It was a phenomenon it's first season, but then Lee Daniels had to up the stupidity rather than just tell a dope story about this family struggling to keep their position in the cut-throat music business. It became an LGBT thing, people were "nah, I'm good" and welp there goes that. Rosanne has shown you that there is still an audience watching live television or television within 3 days of airing.
As many people who watch streaming, more people do not even have cable and watch network TV. The issue continues to be the shows. Look at the concepts of the shows. Female Blacklist, Cheers in somebody's backyard, the Jeffersons but with a white guy. You're just doing the same shyt and calling it different and wondering why people don't like this stuff.