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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., Feb. 24) -- even NCIS can't withstand The Voice

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
A second two-hour edition of NBC’s The Voice edged CBS’ usually all-powerful NCIS in total viewers Tuesday night while otherwise dominating among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.

The Voice drew 488,180 D-FW viewers in its first hour, with NCIS pulling in 453,310. The second half of The Voice then beat NCIS: New Orleans by a significantly wider margin -- 502,128 viewers to 355,674.

In the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic, The Voice crushed all comers with 176,613 viewers for its full two hours.

Fox4’s local newscast, enriched by heavy coverage of a snowy forecast for Wednesday morning, won the 9 p.m. hour with 341,726 total viewers and 129,306 in the 18-to-49 age range.

NBC’s one-hour Parks and Recreation series finale ran third at 9 p.m. in total viewers with 118,558 and moved up to second place among 18-to-49-year-olds (66,229). Both finishes were in the Big Four broadcast network arena. On cable, Fox Sports Southwest’s Dallas Mavericks-Toronto Raptors game was the 9 to 10 p.m. runner-up to Fox4’s news with 167,376 total viewers and 88,306 in the 18-to-49 motherlode.

ABC’s 8 p.m. episode of Marvel’s Agent Carter continued to crater with prime-time’s lowest scores (among the Big 4 broadcasters) in both total viewers (69,740) and 18-to-49-year-olds (28,384).The network’s other Tuesday night attractions -- Fresh Off the Boat, Repeat After Me and Forever -- also crashed to the No. 4 position in both ratings measurements.

Here are Tuesday’s local news derby results on the second-to-last weekday of the February “sweeps.”

Gannett8 overcame another stinko lead-in from Forever to win at 10 p.m. in total viewers. But Fox4 drew the most 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions and NBC5 did likewise at 5 p.m. The 6 p.m. firsts went to CBS11 in total viewers and Fox4 among 25-to-54-year-olds.

D-FW TELEVISION NEWS NOTE -- It might only further fuel his ratings. But Bill O’Reilly now is being called a fabricator -- or more to the point an outright liar -- by longtime Gannett8 investigative reporter Byron Harris and former anchor Tracy Rowlett. It all has to do with O’Reilly’s Kennedy assassination-tied tale after Congress reopened an investigation of that very dark day in Dallas.

Both Harris and Rowlett were colleagues of O’Reilly in the late 1970s during his brief tenure at the Dallas-based TV station. In March 1977, O’Reilly claims to have been knocking on the door of a Russian emigre’s Palm Beach, Florida residence when he heard a “shotgun blast” from within. The man he was tracking, George de Mohrenschildt, had just committed suicide. He had been a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald’s who earlier had testified before the Warren Commission and was being called to re-testify before Congress.

A January 2013 piece by Jefferson Morley had already provided seemingly irrefutable evidence that O’Reilly in fact was in Dallas at the time of Mohrenschildt’s death. But O’Reilly had continued to repeat this tale, most recently on page 300 of his bestselling book, Killing Kennedy.

Harris and Rowlett, interviewed this week by the openly liberal watchdog site, Media Matters, are even blunter in their declarations that O’Reilly made the whole thing up. Says Rowlett: “O’Reilly’s a phony. There’s no other way to put it. He was not up on the porch when he heard the gunshots. He was in Dallas. He wasn’t traveling at that time.”

Says Harris: “He stole that article out of the newspaper. I guarantee Channel 8 didn’t send him to Florida to do that story because it was a newspaper story. It was broken by The Dallas Morning News.”

On Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, the host has vociferously defended himself against an earlier report, in Mother Jones Magazine, that he embellished his role in covering the 1982 Falklands War. He also has assailed “far left zealots” for smearing him.

Whether O’Reilly will be equally out front in defending himself on this newest charge is an open question that could be answered on Wednesday’s edition of “The Factor.”

Ironically, O’Reilly has been one of the least accusatory prominent news personalities when it comes to NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams’ acknowledged misrepresentations of his journalistic exploits. Wiliams currently is serving a six-month unpaid suspension.

On Tuesday’s edition of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart told viewers that “no one’s watching him (O’Reilly) for the actual truth.” He also encouraged naysayers to “just move on.”

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net