Friday, June 27, 2008

DFW viewers all but absent Thursday night

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., June 26)

By Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

Yawn. Network prime-time programming went largely unnoticed in D-FW Thursday, leaving Fox4's 9 p.m. newscast with the biggest audience in the 7 to 10 p.m. combat zone.

Not that it was that big an audience. The news pulled in a medium-sized 119,344 homes while also ranking as the most-watched prime-time program among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds. In doing so, it whipped the premiere of ABC's competing Hopkins (104,731 homes), a non-fiction hospital drama with five more weeks to go.

Fox's So You Think You Can Dance, which evicted Flower Mound-dweller Chelsea Traille, won the 8 p.m. hour in both ratings measurements. Two North Texans remain in the competition -- Comfort Fedoke of Carrollton and Joshua Allen of Fort Worth.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, also from Fox, ran first at 7 p.m. in total homes. But it fell to second place with 18-to-49-year-olds, behind the first hour of NBC's Last Comic Standing.

NBC also had good news of sorts with Fear Itself. The anthology series' fourth episode for the first time equaled the total homes audience for CBS' competing summer series Swingtown. And it handily beat it among 18-to-49-year-olds, even while finishing third in the 9 p.m. hour.

The local news wars saw WFAA8 tally wins at 10 p.m. in both total homes and with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 countered with a double victory at 6 a.m., stretching its winning streak to seven weekdays.

WFAA8 returned to the winner's circle at 5 p.m. with two golds. And it ran the table at 6 p.m. for the fourth consecutive weekday.

Pegasus News content partner - UncleBarky.com

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for a list of possible Emmy-nominated programs.

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