Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., Nov. 4) — Election Day edition

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

Wall-to-wall election returns coverage by an array of broadcast and cable networks climaxed at 11:15 p.m. with the final words from president-elect Barack Obama.

It went on, of course, all night long. But we'll concentrate on the hours that really counted in this deluxe recap of how many D-FW viewers watched the action on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Note that the Fox network broadcast feed was anchored by Shepard Smith, while Fox News Channel had a separate presentation helmed by Brit Hume. Their election projections of states won by Obama or John McCain were made simultaneously, though.

NBC and MSNBC took the same approach. The mothership's broadcast network feed was anchored by Brian Williams while MSNBC was in the hands of point man David Gregory. Projections also were made simultaneously.

Here are a few other notes of interest before we begin counting. Fox4 pretty much carried the Fox broadcast network feed from 6 to 9 p.m. before going to mostly local coverage from 9 to 10 p.m. during its regular homegrown news hour.

NBC5, WFAA8 and CBS11 broke to network coverage en masse at 6:30 p.m. and pretty much stayed with it, save for local news cut-ins, until 10 p.m.

The 10 to 11:15 p.m. election coverage in D-FW accented the local races. But all four broadcast stations went to their respective networks to carry the Obama and McCain speeches in their entirety. McCain began at 10:18 p.m. and ended at 10:28 p.m. Obama began at 10:58 p.m. and ended at 11:15 p.m. Our detailed look at the overall coverage is on unclebarky.com's Network News & Reviews page.

Now to the nighttime D-FW ratings for total viewers. For those who still ask and for new readers of this site, WFAA8 and KERA13 are listed that way because they're not owned by their respective networks, ABC and PBS. The three other D-FW broadcast stations listed -- Fox4, NBC5 and CBS11-- are owned by their respective networks.

And there you have it.

Local news derby blip

In the only race unaffected by network cut-ins, Fox4 dominated for the third straight day in the 6 a.m. hour. We're now one-fifth of the way through the 20-weekday November "sweeps" ratings period, which ends on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on the various channels' coverage of Election Night.