The extended break didn't do much for "FlashForward," and it's likely college championship basketball didn't help, either.

Coming back to ABC 105 days after its most recent new episode, the highly serialized drama based on the Robert Sawyer novel seemed to lose some viewers. OK, a lot of viewers.

The two-hour return Thursday earned a 4.3 rating/7 share average in Fast National overnight ratings from The Nielsen Co. That was enough to beat a bunch of reruns on the other networks along with NBC's comedy block in the first hour, but actually finished behind "The Office" and a resurging "30 Rock" in the second hour to finish a weak night of new programming.

Of course, both hours as well as the 10 p.m. timeslot were completely dominated by NCAA basketball on CBS, which averaged a 6.5/11 for the night. Not exactly Super Bowl-style numbers, but enough to convince the networks to keep most of the programs off the air for the night.

The audience for "FlashForward" was the lowest ever for the young show, which to date has aired only 12 episodes, but is said to be fighting for its life. While long hiatuses have been blamed in the past for mid-season drops, especially when it comes to freshman shows, "FlashForward" really seems to be picking up where it left off.

Thursday's episodes were down just 6.5 percent from the Dec. 3 episode, those numbers being the previous series low, dropping more than 11 percent from the Nov. 19 episode just before Thanksgiving.

That's a 44 percent drop from its series premiere Sept. 24, and is 23 percent off its Season 1 average of 5.6/9.

So if the hiatus didn't hurt ratings, what did? NCAA basketball?

That's unlikely. No other new shows seemed to struggle against basketball. "Community" and "Parks & Recreation" on NBC averaged a 3.2/6, slightly better than the 3.0/6 it averaged the week before. "The Office" in the 9 p.m. hour picked up a 4.6/8, a nearly 5 percent improvement from the previous week, while "30 Rock" boosted its audience by 23 percent from the week before, nearly hitting its season high of a 4.5/7.

"The Marriage Ref" in the former "Jay Leno Show" timeslot at 10 p.m. on NBC bounced back significantly from a 19-percent fall the week before to reach a timeslot high of 4.9/9.

No other network aired new programming that night, and since basketball numbers finished 26 percent lower than what CBS programming typically pulls in audience-wise on Thursday nights, there should've been plenty of viewers left to get caught back up on "FlashForward."

The current ratings state -- along with the regular showrunner changes -- is bad news for "FlashForward," although ABC has expressed confidence in the show throughout the winter hiatus. However, if "FlashForward" doesn't get a boost next week into the 5.0-household territory, the show could move its bubble closer and closer to popping.

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that include both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

Data collected from The Nielsen Co., as distributed by Zap2it. BlipNetwork tracks non-news, non-event programming, and figures for this story reflect airing of new episodes only. For more information on the Audience Loyalty Index, click here.