Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 28-30) -- triumphant UW Badgers top Saturday night numbers
03/31/14 09:52 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Please allow your friendly content provider to briefly cross state lines to note that Wisconsin’s pulsating overtime win against Arizona topped D-FW’s prime-time ratings Saturday.
Uncle Barky’s alma mater Bucky Badger basketeers averaged 127,823 viewers on TBS cable. Those aren’t blockbuster numbers but they were good enough to win from start to stop.
Wisconsin’s toughest competition, other than No. 1 seed Arizona, came from Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast. The Badgers drew 149,127 viewers in that hour while the news had 134,925. A peak audience of 184,634 then watched the overtime portion. Wisconsin next will face the much-celebrated kid Wildcats from Kentucky in Saturday’s second Final Four game from Jerry’s Palace.
In other ratings news, AMC’s season finale of The Walking Dead had the weekend’s biggest haul in both total viewers and advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. In the 8 p.m. hour, Walking Dead rolled up 376,369 viewers, with a staggering 257,279 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Sunday’s down-to-the-wire Kentucky win over Michigan topped CBS’ doubleheader basketball ratings with 227,242 total viewers. In prime-time, ABC’s new Resurrection continued to hold steady, drawing 248,546 viewers in the 8 p.m. slot to tie CBS’ basketball run-over mix of The Amazing Race and The Good Wife (which didn’t start until 8:20 p.m.). Other than Walking Dead’s season-ender, Resurrection had Sunday’s top performance with 18-to-49-year-olds.
NBC’s new Sunday night drama combo of Believe and Crisis continued to lag, running an overall fifth with 18-to-49-year-olds. Believe did manage to beat Fox’s competing Cosmos in total viewers.
Friday’s top prime-time draw was Fox4’s 9 p.m. newscast with 191,735 total viewers. The news also had more 18-to-49-year-olds than any other program.
Here are Friday’s four-way local news derby results (with CBS11 sitting out the 6 and 10 p.m. competitions due to basketball preemptions).
NBC5 ran the table at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 flexed with another sweep at 6 a.m. and added a 6 p.m. win with 25-to-54-year-olds. WFAA8 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m.
NBC5 was No. 1 in total viewers at 5 p.m. and shared first place in the 25-to-54 demographic with WFAA8 and CBS11.
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