NHL Finals all but ignored in Dallas-Fort Worth ratings

Reality TV, however, was universally loved.

WFAA8's 10 p.m. newscast ranked as Monday's overall top draw, while the penultimate Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals on NBC drew less than one-third the audience.

We also live in a viewing area where CW33's 10:30 p.m. repeat of Two and a Half Men had more viewers than Boston vs. Vancouver. That's cold.

The Stanley Cup averaged 69,257 D-FW viewers with a peak crowd of 103,886 between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. Two and a Half Men had 124,663 viewers.

The 7 to 10 p.m. prime-time hours otherwise were won by ABC's The Bachelorette in the first hour, Fox's Masterchef from 8 to 9 p.m. and CBS' Hawaii Five-0 repeat and Fox4's local newscast at 9 p.m. The latter two attractions were prime-time's biggest draws with 186,994 viewers each.

Among advertiser-favored 18-to-49-year-olds, Bachelorette and Masterchef respectively controlled the first two hours before ABC's Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition weighed in with a 9 p.m. win after running third in total viewers.

WFAA8 then scored at 10 p.m., doubling the lead-in audience from Weight Loss to lead all Monday programming with 249,325 total viewers. It also won comfortably with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The newscast featured sports anchor Dale Hansen going "Unplugged" in a commentary that in part twitted poor little Uncle Barky and his hamster-powered website. More on this in a later post.

In the other local news derby results, Fox4 returned to 6 a.m. prosperity with twin wins. CBS11 ran first at 6 p.m. in total viewers but WFAA8 took the 25-to-54 crown. Spoils also were split at 5 p.m., with NBC5 winning in total viewers while tying Fox4 for the top spot among 25-to-54-year-olds.