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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues.-Wed., Aug. 7-8) -- Dallas season finale dodges Rangers bullets, paces cable ratings

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
TNT's Season One shutdown of Dallas fell far from the heights of its two-pronged premiere while still beating everything except the Olympics in Wednesday's prime-time Nielsens.

The 8 p.m. "Revelations" episode, in which Christopher Ewing's estranged wife, Rebecca, was outed as Cliff Barnes' scheming daughter, drew 176,127 D-FW viewers. That's a major markdown from the June 13th premiere, when crowds of 331,931 and 338,705 watched back-to-back episodes.

Dallas also dodged a very entertaining Rangers-Red Sox slugfest, which aired during afternoon hours on Fox Sports Southwest. The 10-9 Texas win at Fenway Park averaged a smallish 101,612 viewers. In prime-time, the slugfest assuredly would have drawn at least twice that crowd.

The Ewings have no worries, though. Dallas has been renewed for a second season, with an increase from 10 to 15 episodes. And it again will be filmed in its namesake city, starting later this year.

Wednesday's prime-time Olympics coverage on NBC averaged 670,636 viewers. It ran a bit long, until 10:06 p.m., before the new Matthew Perry series, Go On, sneak-previewed without commercial interruption. Its second 15 minutes had 372,576 viewers after the 10 to 10:15 quarter hour mix of the Olympics/Go On drew 636,765 viewers. That's a good sampling, but also a substantial turn-off for Go On's opening episode. The series won't be back until Sept. 11th as part of the Peacock's revamped Tuesday night lineup.

Tuesday night's four-hour Olympic bloc had 704,506 viewers, with that night's Rangers win over Boston drawing 230,319 viewers on FSS.

Here are Tuesday's and Wednesday's local news derby results, which won't take long.

NBC5, still aided by its network's Olympic torch afterglow, swept the 6 a.m. and 5 and 6 p.m. competitions on both days. That meant solid wins in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

In the downsized three-way 10 p.m. races, WFAA8 and CBS11 tied for Tuesday's 10 p.m. gold in total viewers, with Fox4 winning among 25-to-54-year-olds.

WFAA8 ran the table in Wednesday's 10 p.m. Nielsens.