Dancing puts its foot down

by Ed Bark of of UncleBarky.com

ABC's Dancing with the Stars came back strong Monday night, dominating the 7 to 9 p.m. hours against first-run episodes of Fox's House and CBS' Two and a Half Men.

The eighth edition of DWTS averaged an American Idol-ish 418,509 D-FW viewers, routing runnerup House (172,718 viewers) in the first hour and stomping Two and a Half Men (265,720 viewers) and Rules of Engagement (232,505 viewer) from 8 to 9 p.m.

DWTS also ran first among advertiser-favored 18-to-49-year-olds, with CBS' four sitcoms taking second.

The pendulum then swung at 9 p.m., where CBS' CSI: Miami drew more total viewers (438,438) than DWTS while the premiere of ABC's Castle dipped to a second place 245,791 viewers. Castle ran third, however, among 18-to-49-year-olds, behind NBC's Medium.

Past prime-time, from 11:35 p.m. to 12:35 a.m., CBS' Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson had 66,430 total viewers to top ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live and NBC's fledgling Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (46,501 viewers apiece). But all three talkers were topped in that hour by Fox4's syndicated repeat of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (73,073 viewers).

In the local news derby, CBS11 cruised to comfortable wins at 10 p.m. in both total viewers (358,722) and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. WFAA8 ran second in both measurements.

Fox4 topped the 6 a.m. Nielsens in total viewers, edging NBC5. But the Peacock rebounded with a narrow win among 25-to-54-year-olds. The 7 to 9 a.m. portion of Fox4's Good Day then rebounded to run the table against the three network morning shows.

WFAA8 took both golds at 6 p.m. and NBC5 did likewise in the 5 p.m. competition.