Mavericks fall to CSI: Miami before running up ratings score

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., May 11)

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

The Mavericks' gut-check win against Denver Monday meant dynamite ratings for TNT.

The late-starting Game 4 thriller -- 8:56 to 11:49 p.m. -- averaged 318,864 D-FW viewers overall with a peak of 358,722 between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m.

That outpaced all competing programming except CBS' CSI: Miami, which had 325,507 viewers in the 9 p.m. hour to edge the early stages of Mavs-Nuggets (312,221 viewers).

Elsewhere Monday, Fox's season finale of House, in which the not-so-good doctor checked into a psychiatric hospital, drew a nice-sized 245,791 viewers in running second to the first hour of ABC's Dancing with the Stars (372,008 viewers). Fox's penultimate episode of 24 then fell to 146,146 viewers to run third behind Dancing and CBS' comedy combo of Two and a Half Men and Rules of Engagement.

In local news derby results, CBS11 had a big night at 10 p.m., edging WFAA8 in total viewers and winning comfortably among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

NBC5, sprinting away from the field at 6 a.m., again crunched all competitors in both ratings measurements. WFAA8 drooped to fourth behind bronze medalist CBS11.

WFAA8 ran the table at 6 p.m. and NBC5 did likewise at 5 p.m. Seven weeknights remain in the ongoing May sweeps ratings period.