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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., May 3)

By ED BARK
Out with a whimper, except in the D-FW Nielsen ratings.

The Dallas Mavericks' concluding late night horror show averaged 471,716 homes Thursday, with 287,980 tuned to TXA21 and another 183,736 catching the peerless Marv Albert's call on TNT. That fell short of the six-game playoff high, set Tuesday night with 487,305 homes.

This time audiences dwindled, rather than peaked in the game's desultory final minutes, when Golden State danced on the Mavs' grave. From midnight to 12:15 a.m., the game drew 249,900 homes on TXA21 and 133,280 on TNT. At its TXA21 peak, between 10:30 to 10:45 p.m., the still-alive Mavs had 323,680 homes on hand. TNT's audience topped out between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m. with 221,340 homes.

Thursday's other big draw, a two-hour Grey's Anatomy that also served as a series spinoff, pulled in 326,060 homes from 8 to 10 p.m. on ABC. The big audience lead-in enabled Belo8 to cruise to easy wins at 10 p.m. in both total homes and with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. It's the first time Belo8 has won in the latter competition, where NBC5 was tops on the first five weeknights of the ongoing May "sweeps."

Fox4 continued to rally in the early morning, scoring twin ratings wins at 6 a.m. for the second straight day.

Belo8 still has few if any problems at 5 and 6 p.m., again sweeping those time slots in both measurements.