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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., Sept. 27) -- Lone Star rolls over while WFAA8 news rolls

By ED BARK
Second verse, worse than the first. So consider Fox's Lone Star dead. It can't even get arrested in the city where it's made.

Monday's Episode 2 of the Dallas-made serial drama had a sub-paltry 69,257 D-FW viewers, less than half the "crowd" it drew in premiere week. It also laid a mega-egg among advertiser-courted 18-to-49-year-olds, again luring less than half the audience it had in premiere week.

In both measurements, Lone Star easily was prime-time's least-watched show on the Big Four networks in both ratings measurements. And in each case it had less than one-third the audience of the second least-watched show in the 8 p.m. slot. Those numbers were pretty much replicated nationally, meaning Lone Star is less likely to return next week than Joe Piscopo's career. Uniformly favorable critical reviews, including one from this corner, have done absolutely nothing to help one of the biggest fall season flops in recent memory.

Meanwhile, ABC's second two-hour performance edition of Dancing with the Stars rolled to a massive win from 7 to 9 p.m., drawing 588,685 total viewers while also triumphing among 18-to-49-year-olds.

At 9 p.m., CBS' second episode of Hawaii Five-0 edged ABC's Castle in total viewers by a score of 325,508 to 304,731 while also winning by a bit comfier margin in the 18-to-49 demographic. NBC's competing 9 p.m. episode of Chase, also filmed in North Texas, limped in third in both measurements, drawing 180,068 total viewers.

D-FW ratings for ESPN's Monday Night Football were not immediately available. Suffice it to say that your friendly content provider's native state Packers blew what should have been a victory against the Bears with a combination of inept special teams play and an all-time team record of 18 penalties. QB Aaron Rodgers was tremendous in defeat, but too many of his teammates seemed intent on imitating the Cowboys' Alex Barron.

In local news derby results, WFAA8 came up extremely big in the four time periods where all four of the market's major TV news providers are combatants.

The ABC station was tops in total viewers at 6 a.m. and at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. WFAA8 also won outright at 6 a.m. and 6 and 10 p.m. among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

The only slight smudge was a first-place tie with CBS11 in the 5 p.m. battle for 25-to-54-year-olds. Still, it was WFAA8's best showing in many a month -- and the first double grand slam in this market in more than a year.