Do you have a proof that ratings dropped in Johto? Call it funny thing or coincidence but yesterday night I was looking for ratings of show and what I found out was that in Johto the rating actually increase. Why that happened? When the show started it had little competition but then Digimon came and its rating were higher. Pokemon had a big competition and it was shredding a lot of rating in short time but that didn't affected the writers cause Anime was just meant to promote games. But then Digimon went downhill(starting from third season it sucked) and Pokemon gained it rightful place back and here we had the true winner. As a matter of fact this happened around the time of Johto. So ratings actually increased during Johto due to Digimon's downfall. As for other anime like Yu-gi-oh, BeyBlade, Naruto, etc. they were never a big competition for a big franchise like Pokemon and Digimon who like playing it closer to the chest.
That doesn't surprise me at all. Johto was the first time we ever got a brand new set of pokemon beyond the original 151. OF COURSE due to natural curiosity about these new 100 little creatures the 1st Johto league season was going to have high ratings, but the saga lost steam after dragging out for 3 years. And Digimon didn't go downhill until season 4 NOT season 3! Season 3 was the last season that the series was ever on Fox Kids (& was the highest quality season overall), but when season 4 came around the series got shuffled into syndication and was placed into bad time slots. That along with season 4 in general being the absolute worst season of the Digimon series overall had contributed to Digimon's downfall.
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