Friday Night Lights reruns helping TXA21 newscast

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., Dec. 27)

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

NBC's efforts on behalf of Friday Night Lights have been yeoman of late. The Peacock has been running extended promotional spots touting the critically acclaimed, Austin-made drama series as a family show that just happens to mix in a little football action.

"It's about life," says NBC in touting Lights' move to Wednesdays at 7 p.m. on Jan. 10. That said, a three-hour marathon of Lights repeats played dead in D-FW Wednesday night. They lured an average of 61,880 homes from 7 to 10 p.m. against lineups of reruns on rival stations. That's not a good sign, considering that most viewers have never seen Lights in the first place.

Oh well, the reruns gave the fledgling and very slowly growing TXA21 newscast a better chance to get sampled in prime-time. It averaged 36,890 homes from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, compared to a 26,180-homes average in the four-week November "sweeps." Channel 33's nightly local newscast at 9 p.m. drew 45,220 homes while Fox4's news at the same hour had 109,480 homes.

Wednesday's 10 p.m. crown went to Belo8, which won in both homes and with 25-to-54-year-olds, the key advertiser target for news programming.

NBC5 placed first in homes at 6 a.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., but couldn't prevail with 25-to-54-year-olds in any of those slots. Instead Fox4 won at 6 a.m. while Belo8 was tops in that demo at 5 and 6 p.m.

Over on Uncle Barky's site, Ed talks to Kyle Howard, the star of My Boys on TBS.