After yesterday’s absurdly long post, today I’m sticking with brevity.

Did you know that Daylight Saving Time screws with television ratings? It’s true! Maybe!

Or at least, that’s the meme going around the internets today, and I’m inclined to believe. First, evidence: across the board last night, television ratings were down. Data stolen from TV By the Numbers, my go-to source for this sort of stuff, says that viewing numbers were down 4% in the 8pm slot and 2% in the 9pm slot, compared with numbers from a week ago. Sadly, this seems to have been particularly true for Chuck, which dropped 17%.

Second, wild conjecture: when it’s light outside for more of the day, people stay outside longer, or are more likely to go out some place, or are generally less inclined to fall into a snuggly warm stupor in front of the flickering, undemanding TV screen. The discrepancy in the 8pm and 9pm numbers might back this up a little bit, because at least where I live, 8pm is now significantly brighter than it used to be, but by 9pm, it’s fully dark. Weather certainly has some measurable impact on TV ratings, which is why summer television is so dominated by re-runs and low-budget reality projects, so it’s not too crazy to look to DST as a source for changing viewing patterns.

It’s a huge downer for Chuck fans, who have just started to hope they could be getting another season, thanks to NBC’s universally poor performance. I can only cross my fingers that the all-around drop will lessen the blow of the 17% plummet, but even still. Yeesh.