Monday, July 21, 2008

DFW viewers refuse to Get in the Picture

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., July 18-20)

By Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

The climactic round of the British Open, featuring leader Greg Norman's collapse, couldn't out putt-putt Sunday's Rangers-Twins game in the D-FW Nielsens.

Neither was a blockbuster on a tepid weekend for TV viewing. ABC's mostly morning telecast of the Open averaged a smallish 73,068 total homes, the same as Saturday's third-round coverage. The Rangers' 1-0 road win over the Twins Sunday afternoon drew 80,375 homes on MY27 while Saturday's blowout loss to Minnesota, also on MY27, had 75,504 homes.

Dale Hansen's Sunday, 10:30 p.m. local sports special on WFAA8 fared better, leading all competitors with 102,295 homes. Newy Scruggs' NBC5 show ran second with 73,068 homes while Babe Laufenberg trailed on CBS11 with 48,712. Earlier at 10 p.m., Mike Doocy's Fox4 sports show had 60,890 D-FW homes.

In prime-time Sunday, ABC mega-bombed with the premiere of High School Musical: Get In the Picture, hosted by Nick Lachey. It dug a Death Valley at 7 p.m. drawing a piddling 51,148 homes between episodes of the network's American's Funniest Home Videos (94,988 homes) and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (119,344 homes), both of which were repeats.

Get In the Picture fared even worse among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, where it ran sixth overall with just 18,920 viewers in that age group. Even TXA21's competing local newscast (25,227 viewers) drew a bigger crowd in this key demo.

On Friday night, the second episode of CBS' made-in-Canada Flashpoint cop series held pretty steady in the total homes Nielsens but drooped in the 18-to-49-year-old ratings.

Flashpoint pulled in 126,651 homes to win at 9 p.m. after drawing 148,572 with the previous Friday's premiere episode. But it ran fourth in the 18-to-49 demo behind Fox4's frontrunning 9 p.m. local newscast after topping the field in that measurement a week ago.

In Friday's four major local news combat zones, WFAA8 again set the pace at 10 p.m. with wins in total homes and with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 took first at 6 a.m. in total homes, with WFAA8 the gold medalist in the 25-to-54 demo.

The early evening Nielsens showed Fox4 running the table at 5 p.m. and WFAA doing likewise at 6 p.m. for its 20th straight set of weekday wins.

Pegasus News content partner - UncleBarky.com

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on the latest Uncle Barky show and a sneak preview at September's guest.

See more stories in:

• Media > Television