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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., Sept. 9) -- Fallon punches back hard

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Is the honeymoon already over?

Stephen Colbert’s opening night win over Jimmy Fallon faded to a distant second place finish for Wednesday’s second outing.

Fallon’s NBC Tonight Show had Justin Timberlake as its primary attraction and quickly got to him while keeping commercials to a bare minimum in the show’s first half.
Colbert in contrast offered a veritable festival of ads in the first half of his CBS Late Show and was slow in getting to featured guest Scarlett Johansson after doing two pre-planned bits.

Strategically, that was a bad move on the part of the newcomer -- and the ratings results showed it. Fallon pummeled Colbert in total D-FW viewers by a score of 118,558 to 55,792. On Colbert’s opening night, he drew 160,402 viewers to Fallon’s 90,662. The latter day string of stock market crashes can’t match that kind of fall-off from Colbert.

It was also was a rout Wednesday night among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, with Fallon drawing 50,461 to Colbert’s 28,384. That’s also a sharp reversal from Tuesday, when Colbert whipped Fallon in this key audience demographic by a score of 59,922 viewers to 31,538.

Colbert continued to outdraw ABC’s competing Jimmy Kimmel Live! in both ratings measurements. But on Wednesday night, he also fell behind Fox4’s syndicated combo of Modern Family repeats and TMZ.

In prime-time, Fox’s 7 p.m. episode of Masterchef had a big night, beating NBC’s America’s Got Talent and CBS’ Big Brother across the board.

Fox’s following season finale of Home Free also won its time slot with 18-to-49-year-olds and trailed only NBC’s 8 p.m. episode of The Carmichael Show in total viewers.

Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast then topped its slot among total viewers but was edged by NBC’s season-closer of Last Comic Standing in the 18-to-49 motherlode.

CBS’ 8 to 10 p.m. season (and likely series finale) of Extant ran third in total viewers, beating only ABC’s batch of reruns. Among 18-to-49-year-olds, it fell to fourth from 8 to 9 p.m. before managing to outdraw ABC’s Nashville in the 9 p.m. hour.

Here are Wednesday’s local news derby results.

Fox4 ran the table at 10 p.m. for the second straight day, winning in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

The stations added another pair of firsts at 6 a.m. and was tops with 25-to-54-year-olds at 5 p.m.

TEGNA8 swept the 6 p.m. competitions and tied NBC5 for the most total viewers at 5 p.m.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net