Castle still king, even without Dancing launchpad | None | Uncle Barky's Bytes

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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., April 19) -- Castle still king, even without Dancing launchpad

By ED BARK
Monday night offered one of those telltale "tipping points" in the pivotally important battle for 9 p.m. "lead-in" audiences to local latenight newscasts.

Absent a direct push from ABC's Dancing with the Stars, the network's growingly popular Castle nonetheless prevailed against a new episode of CBS' sagging CSI: Miami.

Castle drew 305,384 D-FW viewers, improving on the audience for the 8:30 p.m. premiere of ABC's lame-brained Romantically Challenged (244,308 viewers). CSI: Miami had 257,879 viewers, equaling the audience for a preceding rerun of CBS' The Big Bang Theory.

Castle also beat CSI: Miami by a comfortable margin among both 18-to-49 and 25-to-54-year-olds, respectively the main target audiences for entertainment and news programming. WFAA8's 10 p.m. newscast then won the 10 p.m. wars in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, with CBS11 a close second in total viewers and third (behind NBC5) among 25-to-54-year-olds.

CSI: Miami used to give CBS11 a dominant newscast lead-in, but Castle has the momentum heading into the May sweeps, which begin on Thursday, April 29th. In an overall close battle between CBS11 and WFAA8, Monday's changing ratings picture could be key. We'll see.

Elsewhere in prime-time, the 10th edition of Dancing's first 90-minute performance show had 441,110 total viewers, doubling the audience for any competing program between 7 and 8:30 p.m. Fox's 24, with the midnight hour approaching in its last season, logged 210,375 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour.

The rain-delayed NASCAR race at Texas Motor Speedway began late Monday morning and stretched through much of the afternoon. It averaged 88,222 viewers, enough to outdraw everything except CBS' 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. combo of The Young and the Restless (122,153 viewers) and The Bold and the Beautiful (88,222 viewers) and WFAA8's one-hour noon newscast (101,795 viewers).

In Friday's other local news derby results, Fox4 ran the table at 6 a.m. against the usually front-running NBC5.

WFAA8 had twin wins at 6 p.m. and also ran first at 5 p.m. in total viewers. NBC5 had the other gold, topping the 5 p.m. competition among 25-to-54-year-olds.
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