Sports and cable news are the only programming that hold up well in traditional ratings anymore. Sports especially so since out of home viewing was incorporated a couple of years ago.
Are sports down across the board? No. Numbers will vary depending on the time period you’re referencing to, specific teams/networks, etc. The NFL was down this last season in aggregate because of Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime, otherwise FOX and CBS had their best seasons in a while. A number of other events/sports are more than capable of hitting multi-year highs from time to time.
It’s basically scripted programming that has **** the bed, and it’s pretty much the reason why networks are trying to get these ratings sites all shut down. The Big 4 primetime numbers are dreadful.