DFW viewers prefer Republican convention to Democratic one

by Ed Bark of of UncleBarky.com

Sarah Palin's much-anticipated speech Wednesday night had blockbuster ratings in D-FW -- at least for a convention. But did it outdraw Barack Obama's acceptance address at last Thursday's closing night of the Democratic gathering?

Let's first look at the 9 to 10:15 p.m. Nielsen numbers for the seven-network convention coverage (Palin's speech stretched past prime-time to 10:08 p.m. locally, with the Big Three broadcast networks all signing off by 10:15 p.m.).

That's a seven-network total of 718,501 D-FW homes. Obama's closer wasn't even close, drawing 440,843 homes on a night opposite the closing hour of a Cowboys-Vikings pre-season game that amassed 280,094 homes from 9 to 10 p.m. on TXA21.

Give all of those homes to Obama and he nips Palin with a grand total of 720,937. But virtually every single Cowboys viewer obviously wouldn't have watched the convention were the meaningless game not in progress.

Wednesday's most-watched show on a single network, another two-hour edition of NBC's America's Got Talent, lured 158,314 homes from 7 to 9 p.m.

On cable, FX's premiere of its motorcycle gang-spiked Sons of Anarchy had 26,792 homes, roughly half the crowd for a competing Law & Order reprise on TNT (56,019 homes).

In the local news derby, three of the four 10 p.m. presentations were delayed for 15 minutes by the convention runover. So we won't count them on this night.

Fox4 won at 6 a.m. in total homes, but NBC5 ran first among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

WFAA8 had the golds at 6 p.m. in both measurements and also topped the 5 p.m. ratings with 25-to-54-year-olds. Fox4 prevailed at 5 p.m. in total homes.

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on the pundits' thoughts on Sarah Palin.

• Staff
• Verified User
• Anonymous