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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., April 17)

By ED BARK
Accustomed to ice cold ratings, the Dallas Stars heated up a bit Thursday with their big Stanley Cup playoff win over Anaheim.

The game, competing against mostly blanket weather coverage on D-FW's Big Four broadcast stations, averaged 73,068 homes on MY27. That's still not much, but it is a season high. And if the Stars get to the next round, look for them to crack the 100,000 home mark and perhaps even beat a network entertainment show or two.

Hail stones and angry-looking weather maps otherwise dominated Thursday's prime-time landscape. And whatever the frustrations over program preemptions, the Nielsens show that D-FW viewers seemingly couldn't get enough of it. Let's break it down in both total homes and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

CBS11 ran first in total homes from 6:30 to 7 p.m., averaging 177,799 to runnerup WFAA8's 153,443. But WFAA8 took that time slot among 25-to-54-year-olds.

WFAA8 took the lead from 7 to 8 p.m., with its 218,595 total homes edging CBS11's 204,590. The ABC station also had the most 25-to-54-year-olds while NBC5 took second in that demo.

WFAA8 then drew the largest weather audiences of the night from 8 to 9 p.m., hauling in 319,064 homes to easily outdraw second place Fox4, which nonetheless jumped up to 231,382 homes after a slow start. Fox4 also ran second, behind WFAA8, among 25-to-54-year-olds.

Interestingly, NBC5 drew 211,897 homes with continuous weather coverage from 8 to 8:30 p.m. But when it gave way to NBC's Scrubs at 8:30 p.m., the total homes number dropped to 107,166.

The 9 p.m. numbers are another revelation. Fox4, with its regularly scheduled, but weather-dominated newscast firing up, led the way with 316,628 homes from 9 to 9:15 p.m., narrowly beating WFAA8 (304,450).

WFAA8 then joined ABC's Eli Stone in progress for the rest of the hour. And its audience dropped sharply to 202,155 homes from 9:15 to 9:30 p.m. despite the station's weather updates during commercial breaks.

In the end, CBS11's continuous weather coverage won the full 9 to 10 p.m. hour with an average of 272,787 homes. Fox4 placed second (236,253 homes overall) and NBC5 finished a distant fourth with ER (138,829 homes). But Fox4 took the hour with 25-to-54-year-olds while WFAA8 ran second with its blend of weather coverage and Eli Stone.

We pause now to let you digest all those numbers and clear your head.

OK, on to the four regularly scheduled local news derbies.

WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in both ratings measurements, with CBS11 second in total homes and Fox4 the runnerup with 25-to-54-year-olds.

Fox4 ran the table at 6 a.m. while WFAA8 again swept the 5 and 6 p.m. news competitions.