Wednesday, July 16, 2008

DFW viewers stay up late to watch baseball

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., July 15, All-Star baseball edition)

By Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

Justin Morneau scores the winning run for the American League.

Going, going, going and finally gone at 12:37 a.m. Wednesday, baseball's 79th annual All-Star game still managed to outscore all competing programming during its four hours and 50 minutes on Fox.

That's not even counting the elongated pre-game show. Pocket calculator technology at unclebarky.com central says that the game itself, which started at 7:47 p.m. Tuesday, averaged 199,719 D-FW homes overall from opening pitch to 15th inning slide across home plate.

Attendance peaked from 8:45 to 9 p.m., with 263,045 homes tuned in. And the game remained on in 126,652 homes when Rangers shortstop Michael Young drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly.

Let's look at some of the night's other peak All-Star game audiences among viewers of varying ages, beginning with advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds:

18-to-49-year-old men -- 105,190 from 9 to 9:15 p.m.

18-to-49-year-old women -- 53,428 from 9 to 915 p.m.

55 years and up -- 161,600 from 8:15 to 8:30 p.m., and 8:45 to 9 p.m.

12-to-17-year-olds -- 48,140 from 10 to 10:15 p.m.

The All-Star game in fact ran fourth overall in prime-time among 18-to-49-year-old women, for whom NBC's America's Got Talent (80,905 viewers) and ABC's PrimeTime: Family Secrets (74,799 viewers) were the top draws.

Us hairy beasts of the same age group knew better, making the All-Star game our runaway first choice throughout the night and into Wednesday's opening wee hour.

There was a brief lapse, though, between 7 and 8 p.m., when another edition of ABC's fall down/go boom Wipeout lured 67,353 men in the 18-to-49 demo opposite what was mostly the All-Star pre-game buildup (67,118 viewers).

Fox also squeezed in at least 11 promos for its new fall series Fringe, although I may have missed one or two. Just before the midnight hour, play-by-play dude Joe Buck dutifully told viewers, "They have built an all-new world of intrigue and adventure that will blow your mind."

He wasn't talking about the game, but of Fringe, helmed by Lost creator J. J. Abrams. By the time of its Sept. 9th premiere, you're likely to have seen a gazillion or two teases for it.

In the three-way 10 p.m. local news derby, WFAA8 took the gold with 194,848 total homes and also won among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

NBC5 rose up at 6 a.m. to win in both ratings measurements, with the usually potent WFAA8 barely holding off longtime pipsqueak CBS11 to take the bronzes.

WFAA8 then controlled the 5 and 6 p.m. news competitions, running its streak at the later hour to 17 straight weekdays.

Pegasus News content partner - UncleBarky.com

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for to read his birthday wishes for Will Ferrell.

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