Friday, January 9, 2009

Fox’s national championship game runs up the score

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., Jan. 8)

By Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

ABC's new episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice went to intensive care Thursday night opposite Fox's Florida-Oklahoma college football finale.

The game averaged 883,519 D-FW viewers, hitting high points of 983,164 between 9:30 to 9:45 p.m. and again from 10:30 to 10:45 p.m.

Grey's Anatomy staggered in with 279,006 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour, losing to a repeat of CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (305,578 viewers). Private Practice then slid to 232,505 viewers, but otherwise moved up to second ahead of an Eleventh Hour repeat on CBS (172,718 viewers).

Football also scored big with advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds. Here are the breakdowns by gender between Florida-Oklahoma and Grey's Anatomy, which generally has a much higher percentage of women viewers.

Florida-Oklahoma

Men 18-to-49 -- 251,356

Women 18-to-49 -- 170,893

Grey's Anatomy

Men 18-to-49 -- 35,700

Women 18-to-49 -- 83,300

Florida-Oklahoma also outdrew Monday's Texas-Ohio State thriller, which averaged 790,517 total viewers in D-FW.

The Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars had scant chance opposite college football's showcase game Thursday. The Mavs' win over the Knicks attracted 26,572 viewers on Fox Sports Southwest. The Stars' loss to the Red Wings had 13,286 viewers on MY27. NBC's biggest prime-time draw, a new episode of My Name Is Earl, had 152,789 viewers.

In Thursday's local news derby, WFAA8 won a downsized three-way race at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the primary advertiser target audience for news programming.

NBC5 continued its recent strong run at 6 a.m. by running the table. The Peacock also swept the 5 p.m. news competitions.

The 6 p.m. golds were split between WFAA8 in total viewers and NBC5 in the 25-to-54 demographic.

Pegasus News content partner - UncleBarky.com

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on Fox4 sports reporter Nita Wiggins being laid off.

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• Media > Television
• Football > College Football