Cowboys vs. Giants racks up season high of DFW viewers

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

Creeping ever closer to the magic 2 million mark, Sunday night's Cowboys-Giants game on NBC peaked at 1,840,111 D-FW viewers in the closing 15 minutes.

That's another 2008 season high, bettering the 1,700,608 viewers who watched the Cowboys collapse in the final XV minutes of last Sunday's loss to the Steelers on Fox.

The big home win against the Giants averaged 1,574,391 viewers overall, also bettering the 1,474,746 viewers for the Steelers game. CBS' competing Survivor: Gabon finale staggered in Sunday night with 225,862 viewers.

NBC's post-game show included a preening Terrell Owens alongside two Cowboys who actually did something during the game -- Tony Romo and Jason Witten. A total of 1,235,598 viewers stuck around to see Owens take a shot at ESPN reporter Ed Werder, whose piece on the Cowboys' latest off-the-field soap opera prompted the usual national headlines plus some hometown booing of Owens during the game. T.O. branded Werder's reporting "irresponsible" while Romo gamely grinned.

Earlier Sunday, David Gregory's debut as the new Meet the Press moderator drew 119,574 viewers from 9 to 10 a.m. That gave MTP a time slot win, although ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos was taken out of the race. WFAA8 instead offered live coverage of the White Rock marathon, which averaged just 39,858 viewers from 8 to 10:30 a.m.

Saturday's prime-time Nielsens were led by ESPN's one-hour Heisman Trophy special (159,432 D-FW viewers from 7 to 8 p.m.) That bettered the crowd for NBC's annual rebroadcast of It's A Wonderful Life, which had 106,288 viewers. Wonderful Life also ran behind TXA21's Mavs-Oklahoma City Thunder game (132,860 viewers) and ABC's Surviving Christmas (119,574 viewers).

On Friday night, CBS' pair of half-hour Frosty the Snowman specials drew 139,503 viewers apiece to finish second from 7 to 8 p.m. behind Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (205,933 viewers).

In local news derby results, WFAA8 won Friday's 6 and 10 p.m. competitions in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 had the other golds, sweeping both the 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. faceoffs.