powered by FreeFind

Apple iTunes

Archives

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., Jan. 25-27) -- throwaway Pro Bowl tops all weekend programming

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
The NFL's annual flag football-esque Pro Bowl, in which a few hard hits actually snuck in, dominated D-FW's Friday-Sunday Nielsens in both total viewers and advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.

A 62-35 win by the NFC over the AFC didn't deter an average of 275,368 viewers from tuning in NBC's prime-time presentation from Hawaii. And 133,955 of those viewers were in the 18-to-49 motherlode. That's a better percentage than the Dallas Cowboys drew for most of their games this season.

The Pro Bowl shrugged off competition from the Screen Actors Guild awards show on TBS/TNT (a combined 96,379 total viewers) and the Dallas Mavericks' home win over the Phoenix Suns (55,074 viewers on Fox Sports Southwest).

The weekend's second biggest draw, CBS' 9 p.m. Sunday episode of The Mentalist, had 240,947 viewers. PBS' wrenchingly sad Sunday night episode of Downtown Abbey scored fairly gargantuan numbers for public television, with 165,221 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour on KERA13. That was strong enough to beat the offerings on both ABC and Fox.

On Friday night, the Mavericks' embarrassing no-show against the depleted San Antonio Spurs lured 96,379 viewers on FSS and added another 27,537 on ESPN.

Here are Friday's local news derby numbers:

CBS11 took the top spot in total viewers at 10 p.m., but WFAA8 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4's Good Day continued to have its way at 6 a.m. with a doubleheader win. The station hasn't been beaten in either ratings measurement throughout the entire month of January, with the four-week February "sweeps" starting this Thursday.

WFAA8 likewise ran the table at 6 p.m. and added a 5 p.m. win with 25-to-54-year-olds. NBC5 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m.
unclebarky@verizon.net