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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., August 6) -- Talent rises to the top, buoys NBC5's late night news (plus a sobering sports blackout update)

By ED BARK
NBC’s summertime pacesetter, America’s Got Talent, rolled up prime-time’s biggest audiences Tuesday with winning numbers from 8 to 10 p.m.

Talent averaged 220,294 D-FW viewers while also calling the tune among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. The first hour of Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance had the most viewers in both measurements from 7 to 8 p.m.

Over on Fox Sports Southwest, the Texas Rangers’ late night win over the Angels averaged 199,642 total viewers with peak crowds of 234,063 between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. and 10 to 10:15 p.m. But AGT’s 9 to 10 p.m. portion edged that segment of the Rangers game by a score of 227,179 viewers to 213,410.

NBC5’s 10 p.m. newscast, unaccustomed to much help from network lead-in programming, basked in the afterglow of AGT and had enough juice to win in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming). Win, that is, against rival newscasts on Fox4, WFAA8 and CBS11. The Rangers otherwise controlled that time period with 227,179 total viewers while NBC5 had 137,684.

In Tuesday’s other local news derby results, Fox4 rolled to another pair of wins at 6 a.m. while WFAA8 swept the 6 p.m. competitions. NBC5 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m., with Fox4 running first among 25-to-54-year-olds.

BLACKOUT LOOMS FOR FRIDAY’S DALLAS COWBOYS GAME

The D-FW viewing area’s roughly 400,000 Time Warner cable subscribers will have to find alternative ways to watch Friday night’s Cowboys-Raiders pre-season game unless the cable giant and CBS end their ongoing stalemate before then.

CBS11 is airing the game locally and also is carrying the Cowboys’ three remaining exhibition games against the Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals and Houston Texans.

Also facing blackouts this weekend: Friday night’s Texas Rangers-Houston Astros game on sister station TXA21 and the climactic Saturday and Sunday rounds of the PGA Championship, which CBS will carry.

The main beneficiary of all this may be area sports bars that get CBS via cable or satellite companies not named Time Warner. Private citizens without Time Warner connections may want to brace for visits by friends and relatives they haven’t seen in a while.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net