Rangers numbers down in Dallas-Fort Worth ratings as championship hopes fade

On CBS11, Lisa Pineiro's debut as the station's new early morning co-anchor failed to move the needle.

Game 2 of the Rangers-Giants World Series still drew well over one million D-FW viewers, but fell close to 200,000 short of Wednesday's opener.

Both games ended with lopsided Giants' wins, seriously deflating ratings in the final half-hour rather than pumping them up.

Game 2, which ended at 10:14 p.m. with a 9-0 Giants victory, averaged 1,239,700 viewers in D-FW, down from the 1,419,769 for Game 1.

The numbers fell off a cliff in the final 15-minute segment. A total of 928,044 viewers remained to witness the carnage, compared to a high point of 1,405,917 just a half-hour earlier.

The Rangers still stomped all competing prime-time programming, with CBS' 9 p.m. episode of The Mentalist topping the non-baseball scoreboard with 318,582 viewers. In contrast, Donald Trump's The Apprentice on NBC drew just 55,406 viewers at that hour to rank as the least-watched attraction on the five principal broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and The CW).

Thursday also marked Day One of the four-week November "sweeps" ratings, although the key 10 p.m. results will be skewed until after the World Series ends.

Nevertheless, CBS11 claimed a pair of opening night victories, topping a diminished three-way field in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

NBC5 nipped Fox4 at 6 a.m. in total viewers, but those finishes were reversed in the 25-to-54 demographic. On CBS11, Lisa Pineiro's debut as the station's new early morning co-anchor failed to move the needle. The station ran a distant fourth in both ratings measurements.

WFAA8 took the 5 and 6 p.m. golds in total viewers and also won at the earlier hour among 25-to-54-year-olds. Fox4 ran first at 6 p.m. among viewers of that age range.