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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., Aug. 14) -- Big Brother still doing big business

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Big Brother continues to roll through the summer, giving CBS a demographic as well as a broad-based hit.

The 16th edition easily won its 8 p.m. slot in total D-FW viewers Thursday with 170,431. Better yet, well over half of those viewers -- 107,741 -- were advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.

It usually works the other way around for CBS, whose biggest hits tend to droop demographically whether they’re first-runs or re-runs. A 7 p.m. repeat of The Big Bang Theory, for instance, ranked as Thursday’s biggest overall prime-time draw with 234,343 total viewers. It also ran first in its time slot among 18-to-49-year-olds, but with just 39,080 viewers in that age range.

NBC’s two-hour season finale of Last Comic Standing won its 9 to 10 p.m. second hour with 149,127 total viewers. It also led the way with 18-to-49-year-olds at that hour, drawing 61,877 of ‘em.

ABC’s 7 p.m. third episode of The Quest continued to slump at that hour with 56,810 total viewers and 22,797 in the 18-to-49 demographic. Those were good for third place finishes among the Big 4 broadcast networks, beating only Fox’s repeat of Sleepy Hollow.

ESPN’s prime-time pre-season football game between the Bears and Jaguars averaged a small-sized 78,114 viewers, with 42,337 of them in the 18-to-49 range. In direct competition on Fox Sports Southwest, the Texas Rangers’ latest loss cratered to 56,810 total viewers and 13,027 in the 18-to-49 measurement.

Here are Thursday’s local news derby results.

CBS11 drew the most total viewers at 10 p.m. while Fox4 won among 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

It was otherwise a day of doubleheader wins. Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions and CBS11 did likewise at 6 p.m. NBC5 ran the table at 5 p.m.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net