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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., Feb. 16) -- battle of the titans: Olympics vs. Idol

By ED BARK
National audiences for NBC's Olympics telecasts are up 25 percent over the 2006 Torino, Italy games in the first four days of competition.

But D-FW doesn't show up in the top 25 metered markets when it comes to measuring the Olympics' popularity. Among Texas cities, only Austin does, ranking in a three-way 16th place tie with Providence, R.I. and Fort Myers, Fla., according to Nielsen Media Research.

That brings us to Tuesday night's first D-FW square-off between a two-hour edition of Fox's American Idol and the 7 to 9 p.m. portion of the Olympics.

It was close, but Idol prevailed here, averaging 475,041 total viewers to the Olympics' 427,537. Idol also won the 7 to 9 p.m. slot among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, with the Winter Games barely holding off a new episode of ABC's Lost in the silver medal competition from 8 to 9 p.m.

The Olympics viewership increased from 9 to 11 p.m., with a total audience of 502,186. That squashed all competing programming, including the remaining three 10 p.m. newscasts.

NBC5's late night news, which is pushed back to 11 p.m. on weekdays, drew 257,879 viewers on the heels of Olympics coverage. That's a bigger audience than first-place CBS11 (176,444 viewers) had at 10 p.m.

CBS11 also prevailed at 10 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. But again, NBC5 had a bigger haul at 11 p.m., drawing twice as many 25-to-54-year-olds as CBS11.

In other local news derby results, the Peacock won everything in sight. NBC5 swept the 6 a.m. Nielsens and added four more golds at 5 and 6 p.m. Even though NBC admittedly is losing money with these Olympics, it's still nice to have them as a promotional platform.
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