Living Dead wasn't the most popular playlist before...then again it never had a permanent home like it does in Reach. Can you imagine a world where Team Objective has a consistent +10,000 player population?
I think it would be interesting if they turned off kill medals and kill/death stat tracking in objective, and replaced it with a feedback system more suited to objective play. I know that the majority of the player population supposedly doesn't care about objective, but I think that Halo games put so much focus on slayer from top-to-bottom via the UI that it can detract from the experience.