Big Sunday for Southern-fried entertainment

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., April 3-5)

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

You might be a redneck -- but mebbe not -- if you first watched Sunday afternoon's Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway before segueing to that night's Academy of Country Music Awards show.

Both ruled the ratings like a corny dog at the Texas State Fair.

The Samsung 500 on Fox, with Jeff Gordon winning in Texas for the first time, averaged 232,505 D-FW viewers before the ACMs ramped it up to 391,937 viewers in prime-time.

The counter-clockwise speeding on Fox easily outdrew the Dallas Mavericks' up-and-down-the-court home blowout win against Phoenix, which had 126,217 viewers on ABC. On NBC, the Tiger Woods-less Shell Open golf tournament from Houston managed 59,787 viewers.

Saturday also was dominated by sports programming, courtesy of CBS' pair of NCAA basketball Final Four games.

Michigan State's upset win over Connecticut had 166,075 viewers, followed by an audience of 219,219 for Carolina's relatively easy victory against Villanova.

In Friday's local news derby results, WFAA8 swept the 10 p.m. contests in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 and NBC tied for first at 6 a.m. in total viewers, with the Peacock prevailing among 25-to-54-year-olds.

Fox4 ran the table at 5 p.m. but was out of the picture at 6 p.m. NBC5 and WFAA8 tied for first at the later hour in both ratings measurements.