Texas a winner in Fiesta Bowl and DFW ratings

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

The Fox telecast averaged 790,517 D-FW viewers, easily the biggest crowd for college football's conveyor belt of bowl games.

Texas' dramatic Fiesta Bowl comeback win over Ohio State rolled to a dominating prime-time win Monday.

The Fox telecast averaged 790,517 D-FW viewers, easily the biggest crowd for college football's conveyor belt of bowl games. But Thursday night's climactic Oklahoma-Florida national championship game clearly has a great shot at topping that number and perhaps even hitting the one million mark.

Throughout the night, Texas-Ohio State outdrew the combined programming on ABC, CBS, NBC and The CW. Among the also-rans, a two-hour edition of NBC's new Superstars of Dance had 225,862 viewers from 7 to 9 p.m. opposite ABC's two-hour premiere of The Bachelor 13 (186,004 viewers). But The Bachelor beat Superstars among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds.

At 9 p.m., ABC's first episode of True Beauty scraped up 199,920 viewers to run third behind football and a repeat of CBS' CSI: Miami (265,720 viewers). True Beauty outdrew CSI: Miami in the 18-to-49 demo, though.

NBC's new Momma's Boys lagged with just 99,645 total viewers at that hour pulling in fifth behind CW 33's 9 p.m. local newscast (112,931 viewers). The Peacock also ran fifth with 18-to-49-year-olds.

In the daily local news derby, WFAA8 topped a downsized three-horse field at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the preferred advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 again scored twin wins at 6 a.m. while also as usual whipping the three network morning shows from 7 to 9 a.m.

WFAA8 had the golds at 5 p.m and also won in total viewers at 6 p.m. WFAA8 and NBC5 shared first place in the later hour among 25-to-54-year-olds.