Heavy duty news day favors WFAA8 in afternoon hours in Dallas-Fort Worth ratings

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., Nov. 5)

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

Local coverage of the horrific shootings at Fort Hood preempted mid-to-late-afternoon entertainment programming Thursday, with WFAA8 attracting the overall largest audiences.

Here's the breakdown from 2:30 to 5 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the preferred advertiser audience for news programming:

The largest audiences gathered between 4 and 5 p.m. before regularly scheduled newscasts kicked in. In that hour, NBC5 edged Fox4 for second place in total viewers but remained third among 25-to-54-year-olds. WFAA8 ran first in both measurements.

Ratings for news coverage couldn't match those of CBS' The Mentalist, which easily had Thursday's biggest haul with 365,365 total viewers in the 9 p.m. hour while also winning with 18-to-49-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for non-news programming.

Fox's Bones began the night with a 7 p.m. win in total viewers, but ran second to CBS' Survivor: Samoa in the 18-to-49 demographic. CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation paced the 8 p.m. field in both audience measurements.

CBS11's 10 p.m. newscast took its dominant Mentalist lead-in to the bank with a win in total viewers while WFAA8 again finished second. The tables were turned among 25-to-54-year-olds, though, with WFAA8 topping runner-up CBS11.

At 6 a.m., NBC5 ended Fox4's three weekday winning streak with a two-pronged sweep.

WFAA8 won in total viewers at both 5 and 6 p.m. while also taking a 5 p.m. gold in the 25-to-54 bout. NBC5 won at 6 p.m. in that demographic.

Check out Uncle Barky's blog for his thoughts on how the four local channels did in covering the Fort Hood tragedy.