I haven't ever been trying to argue that if Mad Men or Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad or something like that aired on a major network it would ever have the same kind of ratings as American Idol. That's absurd. But it would not be unthinkable for one of them to get seven to ten million viewers an episode, if they were promoted right and aired on a network everyone in the country could watch. To me that certainly qualifies as a "LARGE audience".

I mean, let's face it, Game of Thrones is already a colossal cultural phenomenon. How much bigger would it be if it were on a network everyone in the country could watch? (To be fair, it couldn't be aired on broadcast television because of all the sex and violence, but let's just pretend it could for the sake of a hypothetical argument - I'm too lazy to come up with a show on HBO/AMC/something like that that could be aired on a network in the same form). The second season averaged about 3.9 million viewers an episode on the first airing alone (10.3 million if you count all airings). Surely a major network would be able at least to double the 3.9 million figure for the first airing.