No Cowboys but plenty of other marquee pigskin/horsehide in Dallas-Fort Worth ratings

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., Oct. 16-18)

by Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com

The Cowboys' bye week didn't mean a dearth of big-time sports action.

So which of these weekend attractions drew the most D-FW viewers?

A. Saturday morning/afternoon's annual Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma

B. Saturday night's classic, marathon NLCS Game 2 between the Yankees and Angels

C. Sunday afternoon's battle of the unbeatens -- Giants vs. Saints

D. Sunday night's game between the Bears and the next Cowboys' opponent, the Falcons

Before going to the scoreboard, let's look at a few other weekend ratings ups and downs.

Friday night's two-hour season premiere of ABC's Ugly Betty drew just 79,716 D-FW viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot, beating only an 8 to 9 p.m. NBC News special. And in a sign of the times -- at least in these parts -- MY27's Friday Night Smackdown! (106,288 viewers) outdrew Game 1 of the Yankees-Angels (93,002 viewers from 7 to 9 p.m.).

Baseball fared a bit better among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds, but still couldn't beat NBC's Law & Order in the 7 p.m. hour or CBS' Medium and Numb3rs from 8 to 10 p.m.

WFAA8 ended up Friday night's biggest loser with a pair of locally produced half-hour sports specials, Battle in Big D and Pride of the Big 12. Big D had a smallish audience of 66,430 viewers at 9 p.m. before Big 12 shrunk to 19,929.

But Big D did beat the first half-hour of NBC's hapless Jay Leno Show among 18-to-49-year-olds. Then again, both shows were outdrawn in this key demographic by MY27's 9 p.m. King of the Hill repeat. That's gotta hurt.

In Friday's local news derby results, CBS11 cruised to a pair of 10 p.m. wins in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The newscast had Friday's biggest audience on any channel with 225,862 total viewers.

NBC5 ran the table at 6 a.m. for a third straight weekday, with Fox4 again second in both ratings measurements.

Fox4 then swept the 5 p.m. competitions and the Peacock did likewise at 6 p.m.

OK, let's get to those four marquee sports matchups.

A. Texas' 16-13 win over OU was the weekend's lion king. Stretching almost to 3 p.m., the game averaged 684,229 total viewers on ABC.

B. The Yankees' 13-inning, 4-3 win over Los Angeles on Fox, which didn't end until 12:07 a.m. Sunday, averaged only 106,288 viewers. But it did slowly build an audience in late night hours, peaking at 166,075 viewers between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. Still, NBC's Saturday Night Live beat baseball in the 10:30 p.m. to midnight slot with an identical overall average of 166,075 viewers.

C. The Saints' 48-27 thrashing of the Giants averaged 391,937 viewers on Fox.

D. Atlanta's 21-14 win over Chicago on NBC's Sunday Night Football had 411,866 viewers. The 4-1 Falcons come to Jerry's Palace on Sunday.