It takes a lotta Talent for NBC5 to be No. 1 at 10 in Dallas-Fort Worth ratings

by Ed Bark of of UncleBarky.com

It's too late to rethink this Jay Leno thing, but NBC stations already know what's worked for them this summer -- particularly on Tuesday nights.

That's when the Peacock's America's Got Talent swaggers into view with its weekly two-hour live performance special. Late night local newscasts then feast off the show's bountiful lead-ins.

The latest edition again crumpled all competition from 8 to 10 p.m., drawing 298,935 D-FW viewers while also rolling up the score among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds.

In each measurement, Talent more than doubled the audience for any competing broadcast network program. But on Fox Sports Southwest, the Texas Rangers' win over Toronto in the second half of a doubleheader averaged a nice-sized 179,361 viewers for the entire game.

It was the same Tuesday night story at 7 p.m., too, with CBS' NCIS repeat winning the hour in total viewers but falling to third with 18-to-49-year-olds behind Fox's Hell's Kitchen and NBC's Talent recap.

ABC again crashed and burned with a prime-time lineup of Crash Course, Shaq Vs. (Cardinals' slugger Albert Pujols in this case) and PrimeTime: Outsiders. All three ran fifth in their respective time slots.

In the local news derby, NBC5's 10 p.m. edition had comfy wins in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

The Peacock also re-took command of the 6 a.m. competitions with twin wins over runnerup Fox4.

Fox4 dominated the early evening news Nielsens, tying WFAA8 for first place at 6 p.m. in total viewers, but keeping the gold to itself among 25-to-54-year-olds, where it won for an eighth straight weekday.

Fox4 ran the table at 5 p.m. with another helping hand from a pair of potent Judge Judy shows in the preceding hour.