Tuesday, August 26, 2008

DFW viewers spread their convention-watching love

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., Aug. 25)

By Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

It's a beautiful day in the ratings 'hood, with all kinds of interesting numbers from Monday's report cards.

Let's start with opening night of the Democratic National Convention, where seven networks collided during the 9 to 10 p.m. hour. None of them -- cable or broadcast -- were able to outpoint Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast, which drew a modest-sized 87,682 D-FW homes. But the timeslot winner came from the cable world, where TNT's "summer season finale" of Saving Grace tipped the scales at 107,166 homes.

Here are the 9 to 10 p.m. convention numbers, in order of finish:

If you're Katie Couric, that's another ratings indictment, at least in the North Texas viewing area. Especially when your lead-in attraction, a repeat of The New Adventures of Old Christine, draws 124,216 homes from 8:30 to 9 p.m. while ABC's rerun of Samantha Who? lures just 48,712 homes in that same half-hour.

Also of note: Presumed Republican nominee John McCain's appearance on Monday's Tonight Show, drew a significantly larger audience than NBC's one hour of convention coverage. It attracted 104,731 homes overall and 121,780 in the first half-hour, which included most of McCain's guest shot.

Pre-convention, the Peacock had prime-time's most-watched attraction, a new episode of Deal or No Deal (197,284 homes). At 8 p.m., the Peacock's premiere of America's Toughest Jobs had 129,087 homes. Fox's two-hour reprise of last season's Prison Break finale drew 53,583 homes in its first hour and 51,148 in the second.

In the local news derby, let's look at those mostly bigger "Back to School" numbers for the 6 a.m. hour. Audiences for the previous Monday (Aug. 18) are in parentheses for both total homes and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

WFAA8 fared much better at 10 p.m., winning comfortably in both ratings measurements Monday in the first four-way competition since NBC's Olympics telecasts were extinguished.

WFAA8 also recaptured much of the 5 and 6 p.m. terrain it had lost to NBC5 during the Olympics. This time the Peacock prevailed only at 5 p.m. among 25-to-54-year-olds, with WFAA8 sweeping the three other contests.

Pegasus News content partner - UncleBarky.com

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on the coverage of the Democratic Convention.

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