If I recall, Ghostbusters was generally well received...for the first three weeks. That's when most of the effects were working and it had full casts.
After that, effects were breaking, and people dropped out, so the whole thing wasn't as hot as it was in the early season.
And when it comes to HotY, there's a bunch of factors which ultimately determine it (a lot of them more relating to operations than actual scares.), but one of them is cast turnovers and folks definitely dropped out of Ghostbusters, which did count against it.