Question: Why did Stone and Parker believe the show's ratings in the third season reflected the show's "true" fan base?
About the article "South Park", section "Ratings".

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When "South Park" debuted, it was a huge ratings success for Comedy Central and is seen as being largely responsible for the success of the channel, with Herzog crediting it for putting the network "on the map".
The show's first episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", earned a Nielsen rating of 1.3 (980,000 viewers), at the time considered high for a cable program.
The show instantly generated buzz among television viewers, and mass viewing parties began assembling on college campuses.
By the time the eighth episode "Starvin' Marvin" aired three months after the show debuted, ratings and viewership had tripled, and "South Park" was already the most successful show in Comedy Central's history.
When the tenth episode "Damien" aired the following February, viewership increased another 33 percent.
The episode earned a 6.4 rating, which at the time was over 10 times the average rating earned by a cable show aired in prime time.
The ratings peaked with the second episode of season two, "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut", which aired on April 22, 1998.
The episode earned an 8.2 rating (6.2 million viewers) and, at the time, set a record as the highest-rated non-sports show in basic cable history.
During the spring of 1998, eight of the ten highest-rated shows on basic cable were "South Park" episodes.
The success of "South Park" prompted more cable companies to carry Comedy Central and led it to its becoming one of the fastest-growing cable channels.
The number of households that had Comedy Central jumped from 9.1 million in 1997 to 50 million in June 1998.
When the show debuted, the most Comedy Central had earned for a 30-second commercial was US$7,500.
Within a year, advertisers were paying an average of US$40,000 for 30 seconds of advertising time during airings of "South Park" in its second season, while some paid as much as US$80,000.
By the third season (1999), the series' ratings began to decrease.
The third season premiere episode drew 3.4 million viewers, a dramatic drop from the 5.5 million of the previous season's premiere.
Stone and Parker attributed this drop in the show's ratings to the media hype that surrounded the show in the previous year, adding that the third season ratings reflected the show's "true" fan base.
The show's ratings dropped further in its fourth season (2000), with episodes averaging just above 1.5 million viewers.
The ratings eventually increased, and seasons five through nine consistently averaged about 3 million viewers per episode.
Though its viewership is lower than it was at the height of its popularity in its earliest seasons, "South Park" remains one of the highest-rated series on Comedy Central.
The season 14 (2010) premiere gained 3.7 million viewers, the show's highest-rated season premiere since 1998.
History and production.
In 1964, Roddenberry proposed the original "Star Trek" TV series to Desilu Studios as "like "Wagon Train", a "Wagon Train" to the stars."
The network rejected the show's first pilot, "", starring Jeffrey Hunter as "Enterprise" Captain Christopher Pike; however, NBC executives, still impressed with the concept, made the unusual decision to commission a second pilot: "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
The first regular episode ("The Man Trap") of "Star Trek" aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966.
While the show initially enjoyed high ratings, the average rating of the show at the end of its first season dropped to 52nd (out of 94 programs).
Unhappy with the show's ratings, NBC threatened to cancel the show during its second season.
The show's fan base, led by Bjo Trimble, conducted an unprecedented letter-writing campaign, petitioning the network to keep the show on the air.
NBC renewed the show, but moved it from primetime to the "Friday night death slot", and substantially reduced its budget.
In protest Roddenberry resigned as producer and reduced his direct involvement in "Star Trek" which led to Fred Freiberger becoming producer for the show's third and final season.
Despite the protests of a renewed letter-writing campaign, NBC cancelled the series. 
As the season progressed, the ratings declined, greatly hurting the show's chances of being renewed.
Writer John McNamara partially blamed "Brisco"s low ratings on its Friday 8:00 pm time slot.
He said not many people watch television at that time, so "fighting for numbers" then was "like being stuck on Normandy beach".
Grushaw acknowledged the high quality of the show and the vocal support from its small fan base.
"Obviously the viewers are very passionate about the show... and when you read some of the things they have to say, it gives you real pause," Grushaw told "USA Today" in 1994.
By May of that year, Grushaw said renewing "Brisco" was a 50–50 call.
At the end of its season, "Brisco" was one of the lowest rated shows of the year, and Fox confirmed its cancellation in June.
"Brisco"s writers were planning for another season before the show's cancellation.
They had not penned the ending of the first season as a finale for the series and had broad ideas for the second season, which would have featured Brisco settling in as the sheriff of a small town.
In his autobiography, Campbell mused, "To explain why a TV show is canceled is almost impossible.
Ironically "Brisco", with its off-kilter humor, wouldn't have been developed on any other network, yet the appeal of 'Westerns' was still rural – not the side Fox's urban bread was buttered on.
"Writer and supervising producer Brad Kern reflected on the show's cancellation, saying, "Ten years later, everybody you talk to... they all love the show.
I think that was the biggest disappointment about the show not coming back.
We knew we were doing something special."
Told of the show's success in the "TV Guide" "Save Our Shows" poll, Sandy Grushow said, "Obviously I'm happy and not entirely surprised," but added, "You can't dismiss a season's worth of ratings."
Kim Manners, director on nearly a third of the "Brisco" episodes, said working on the series gave him an opportunity to grow creatively.
He told writer Joe Nazzaro, "It really woke me up as a director, almost spiritually," and that directing for "Brisco" was a large contributing factor to his success as a regular director on "The X-Files".
Manners said, "When they didn't give it a second year, I was devastated," adding that he wished Cuse would have made a feature film based on "Brisco".
Considering the show's short life, Cuse later commented, "If the show could have survived into a second season, I think it could have ended up running for actually a long time.
Some shows just sort of fall through the cracks in the right away and they kind of stay on the air long enough to aggregate an audience.
I think if circumstances had been different, "Brisco" could have had a much longer life."
Cuse also said the Friday night time slot hurt "Brisco"s chances of building an audience, saying, "We were on at 8 p.m. on Friday night, which is sort of a death slot – I mean people do still go bowling – few shows have succeeded in that slot."
"Pip" is a relatively unpopular episode of the series.
According to creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, it is "probably one of the least popular episodes of "South Park"" they have ever produced, and that "most people pretty much hated it."
In 2004, Stone said that he considers the episode "really cool" and "really good".
In a 2011 "Entertainment Weekly" feature, the two named what they consider the best 15 episodes of "South Park", along with the 53 worst.
"Pip" was number 49 on the "Worst" list (following the first 48 spots which collectively consisted of every episode from the first three seasons).
Parker said that "Everyone, including us, hates 'Pip'", and Stone said "I don't hate it.
But it was like, 'Why did you guys do that?'"
The creators said that recreating "Great Expectations" in "South Park" style "seemed like a decent enough idea, except that kinda sucks", especially its ending.
They have concluded that while they sometimes want to do an episode that is different in style and presentation to the other episodes, it is necessary to have it involve the regular characters, otherwise audiences will not like it.
In his paper about the episode, Jeffrey Sconce said that the episode ultimately "proved a rather self-indulgent effort", and that it had failed "in terms of viewer response and ratings."
In their review of the fourth season DVD, IGN called the episode "a serious fizzle", saying that the creators "don't always hit a home run.
""Pip" was released on the DVD "South Park: The Complete Fourth Season" in the United States on June 29, 2004.
The DVD contains a short audio commentary on every episode from Parker and Stone.
Episodes of season 4 have also been released digitally, on services such as Amazon Instant Video, the iTunes Store, and Xbox Live Marketplace.
Like most episodes of "South Park", "Pip" is available to watch for free on the show's website, SouthParkStudios.com. 
The show became a showcase for comedy and music which was reflected in the show's segments: