Talent mostly rises to the top in battle with CBS "reality" opener/closer | None | Uncle Barky's Bytes

powered by FreeFind

Apple iTunes

Archives

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., Sept. 14) -- Talent mostly rises to the top in battle with CBS "reality" opener/closer

By ED BARK
NBC mostly won the prime-time wars on a night marked by series finales and premieres.

The big-ticket item, NBC's two-hour America's Got Talent closer, started a bit sluggishly in combat with Wednesday's season premiere of CBS' Survivor: South Pacific.

The 7 to 8 p.m. first hour of a 90-minute Survivor drew 249,325 D-FW viewers to best hour one of Talent (228,548). But Talent muscled up in its climactic 8 to 9 p.m. hour, drawing 304,731 viewers in whipping the closing half-hour of Survivor (221,622) and the opening 30 minutes of CBS' Big Brother 13 finale (193,920).

Talent swept its two-hour time slot with advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, though. And NBC's following premiere of the comedy Up All Night kept the network's good times rolling with a 9 to 9:30 p.m. sweep in both total viewers (228,548) and 18-to-49-year-olds.

The Peacock's first episode of its comparatively little-promoted Free Agents then fared poorly, drooping to 152,365 total viewers to run third behind the second half of Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast (214,697) and the last half-hour of Big Brother (166,217). Free Agents fell to fourth with 18-to-49-year-olds, an early bad sign.

Over on CW33, the 7 p.m. premiere of H8R, which included Dallas pilot and former Bachelor star Jake Pavelka as a punching bag, limped into view with a measly 62,331 total viewers. The network's following season premiere of America's Next Top Model skidded onto the runway with only 69,257 total viewers before CW33's hard-pressed 9 p.m. local newscast went into virtual eclipse with 6,926 viewers.

Both H8R fared a bit better with 18-to-49-year-olds, though, outdrawing a pair of Fox's place-holding Buried Treasure episodes before the newscast again fell off a cliff.

TXA21's prime-time news, now cut to a 7 to 8 p.m. hour, likewise scraped bottom with just 6,926 total viewers before the syndicated version of America's Funniest Home Videos replicated that number.

On Fox Sports Southwest, the first-place Texas Rangers' early-starting rout of Cleveland averaged a decent-sized 159,291 total viewers.

In Wednesday's four-way local news derby competitions, WFAA8 overcame the night's skimpiest 9:45 to 10 p.m. lead-in audience to win at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 likewise swept the 6 a.m. competitions, with WFAA8's usually third-place Daybreak perking up to tie NBC5 for a distant second place with 25-to-54-year-olds.

WFAA8 prospered with twin wins at 6 p.m.; Fox4 won in total viewers at 5 p.m. while tying NBC5 for the top spot among 25-to-54-year-olds.
|