Thylacine, You are assuming of course that there are sufficient direct passengers to maintain load factors. Usually the reason for having connecting routes (hub and spoke) or triangulated flights is to increase the net passenger loads from what was unsustainable to reasonable profit, regardless of the incured extra cycle costs.
VB seems to be having a go at hub busting, a catch phrase used in the states ever since the first RJs appeared, with very mixed results. One result is total pasengers numbers increase and all are happy (but where do these extra passengers come from), the other is a drain on hub passengers to a point where all services become marginal. Its nice to think that when a 737 can not be filled that an E-jet will take its place increasing loads, however what does the 737 now do? It will still cost a stack of cash to sit idle.
The fact that a lot of these flights are once a day shows a mixed commitment effort as well, almost a testing the water attitude which would agree with EWLs' view that an unsure marketing/scheduling department is feeling for extra passengers to utilise an oversupply of aircraft.