powered by FreeFind

Apple iTunes

Archives

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., Feb. 15) -- CBS rolls while Fox4 continues to shake up 10 p.m. news picture

By ED BARK
Only Glee stood in the way of a perfect prime-time night for CBS Tuesday.

The Fox sing-along outdrew CBS' NCIS at 7 p.m. among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds. CBS otherwise ran the table, sweeping D-FW's total viewer Nielsens from 7 to 10 p.m. with NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and The Good Wife while also winning two of those three hours in the 18-to-49 demographic.

Sinking fast for Fox was the second episode of Traffic Light, which ran fourth at 8:30 p.m. in total viewers with just 76,183 while placing in the same spot with 18-to-49-year-olds. Running Wilde, since canceled, had a similar fall-off following Raising Hope, which already has been picked up for a second season.

At 6 p.m., the second of Jeopardy's three Watson the IBM computer episodes perked up slightly by drawing 34,629 total viewers on TXA21. Competing newscasts on WFAA8 and CBS11 shared first place in the time slot with 166,219 viewers. Jeopardy did, however, nip NBC5's 6 p.m. news among 18-to-49-year-olds.

The 10 p.m. local news competition found CBS11 on top in total viewers for the seventh time in nine February "sweeps" weeknights. But the bigger news may be the continued and unprecedented strong showing by Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming on most stations. Fox4 ran first in this measurement Tuesday for the fifth time in the "sweeps," which will reach the halfway point Wednesday. And it won fairly comfortably over runner-up CBS11 by a score of 93,201 to 74,561 viewers.

Fox4 remains a longshot to claim a major sweeps period win at 10 p.m. for the first time since Fox officially took ownership of the station in 1995. But it's not out of the question, and would mark a huge breakthrough for the followup act to the station's much more heavily promoted and comparatively resource-rich 9 p.m. newscast.

In other local news derby results, Fox4 and NBC5 tied for first at 6 a.m. in total viewers, but Fox4 again flexed among 25-to-54-year-olds while WFAA8 slipped into second place ahead of the Peacock.

WFAA8 also fared better than usual in the early evening, running the table at 5 p.m., taking the 6 p.m. gold in the 25-to-54 demo and tying CBS11 for first place at the later hour in total viewers.
|