Why Do You Think the Ratings Fell by Season 4?

[TMC]

To give you a better idea:

During the show's first three seasons, The A-Team managed to pull in 17% to 20% of the American households on average. The first regular episode ("Children of Jamestown"), reached 26.4% of the television watching audience, placing fourth in the top 10 rated shows, according to the Nielsen ratings.[6] By March, The A-Team, now on its regular Tuesday timeslot, dropped to the eight spot, but rated a 20.5%.[20] During the sweeps week in May of that year, The A-Team dropped again but remained steady at 18.5%,[21] and rose to 18.8% during the second week of May sweeps.[22] These were the highest ratings NBC had achieved in five years.[23] During the second season, the ratings continued to soar reaching third place in the twenty highest rated programs, behind Dallas and Simon & Simon, in January (mid-season),[24] while during the third season, it was beaten out only by four other NBC shows, including The Cosby Show.

The fourth season saw The A-Team experience a dramatic fall, as it started to lose its position while television viewership increased. As such, the ratings, while stable, were relatively less. The season premiere ranked a 17.4% (a 26% audience share on that timeslot) on the Nielsen Rating scale,[25] but after ratings quickly declined. In October, The A-Team had fallen to the 19th and by Super Bowl Night had fallen still to 29th the night on which the show had originally scored its first hit three years before.[26] For the remainder of its fourth season The A-Team managed to hang around the 20th spot, far from original top 10 position it had enjoyed during its first three seasons.

Was it because by Season 4, they ran out of ideas. I mean, when you think about it, 95% of the episodes were virtually the same thing:
1) A little guy gets pushed around by a larger rival/competitor who wants him to sell his business; OR

2) Someone is kidnapped and held hostage in South America, Asia, or some island, and the A-Team must rescue them (that must have been done at least 10 times);

Could it also be because during Season 4, the writers or producers took the show in a whole direction. Gone was the same, simple but yet entertaining formula were the team helped the little guy against a bunch of red necks and then in the climax of the each episode built a huge military style weapon to defeat the bad guys. That was almost gone by Season 4 and audiences quit watching the show because most episodes now focused on one of the team members, instead of the whole team. By Season 5, they practically changed the show completely into an '80s version of Mission: Impossible (before the actual '80s version of M:I).

Then again, you could just as easily argue that people stopped watching because they were bored of the formula. After 3 years, the show became SO repetitive that they had to do some things different in Season 4. There is no way that they could've done Season 4 the same way as the first three years-- every conceivable plot had been exhausted. So in Season 4, they had more humorous episodes and guest stars galore.