Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., Oct. 16) -- a big-drawing Round 2

Debate referee, er, moderator Candy Crowley sometimes had her hands full separating combatants Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Photo: Ed Bark

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Tuesday night's at times jaw-to-jaw second debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney easily out-pointed their first encounter in the D-FW Nielsens.

ABC had the biggest crowd among broadcast networks while Fox News Channel again paced the cable news network ratings. Here's the 10-network breakdown in total viewers:

ABC -- 323,557
NBC/Fox News Channel -- 227,179 each
Fox/Univision -- 213,410 each
CBS -- 192,758
MSNBC -- 89,495
CNN -- 75,726
PBS -- 41,305
CNBC -- 27,537

That's a grand total of 1,631,556 viewers, a significantly bigger crowd than the 1,445,681 who watched the first Obama-Romney debate. Last week's veep-fest between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan had 1,342,417 viewers on these same 10 networks.

NBC and ABC had the advantage of big debate warmup acts from 7 to 8 p.m. NBC's The Voice won that hour with 364,863 viewers while Dancing with the Stars (goodbye Bristol Palin) had 296,021 viewers.

The premiere of The CW's Emily Owens, M.D., which aired opposite the debate from 8 to 9 p.m., had a teeny-sized 20,653 viewers.

In Tuesday's local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 had the most viewers at 6 a.m. while tying WFAA8 for the top spot with 25-to-54-year-olds.

The two stations also tied for first at 6 p.m. in the 25-to-54 demographic, but WFAA8 narrowly had first place to itself in total viewers.

Fox4 and CBS11 shared the first place gold at 5 p.m. in total viewers, with WFAA8 the 25-to-54 winner.
unclebarky@verizon.net