Maybe there wasn't enough post primary election drama to keep viewers hooked.

Prime-time ratings for the second quarter showed viewers dropped off significantly from all cable news networks — Atlanta's CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC and CNN's Headline News — from the first three months of the year.

No. 1 overall news network Fox captured 1.6 million prime-time viewers during the second quarter, an 11 percent drop from the first quarter. No. 2 CNN had 961,000 prime-time viewers, a 23 percent decline.

The figures are Nielsen Media Research data supplied by the two networks.

"The interest in the political stuff is waning a little bit," said Derek Baine, an analyst at SNL Kagan Research, a media and financial research firm in New York. "It was very exciting there for a little while when it was neck and neck, and once the writing was on the wall that (Sen.) Hillary (Clinton) was going to have to drop out, people stopped watching."

Kagan said cable TV news ratings may continue to drop during the summer months as well because of the lack of election-related events.

Each network could point to some good news.

Fox recaptured prized ground: 344,000 prime-time viewers age 25-54 vs. CNN's 297,000 in the second quarter. CNN won that category in the first quarter for the first time since 2001.

Still, CNN's prime-time viewers age 25-54 and overall were up considerably from a year earlier. For example, CNN's overall prime-time viewership rose 26 percent vs. about 7 percent for Fox during the 12-month period.

"I think (Sen. Barack) Obama's nomination and his winning the primaries has changed things dramatically for cable, and I think that's one of the reasons why Fox hasn't been doing as well," said Paul Levinson, chairman of Fordham University's communication and media studies department. "People who support Obama don't watch Fox much."

Richard White, a spokesman for Fox News, disagreed. Noting Fox regained the lead in a key prime-time demographic, White said, "It's surprising that a chairman of a communications and media department could be so out of touch and ill-informed."

Levinson said the Internet is also eating into cable news ratings as more people continue to get their news online.

"Cable is not as hot as it was four years ago," he said.