Mar 2013
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., March 28) -- little interest in NCAA hoops, less interest in NBC
03/29/13 11:25 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Round 2 of the NCAA basketball tourney fell to Fox and ABC Thursday night while NBC’s ratings barely dribbled in.
Fox’s American Idol results hour easily won the 7 p.m. hour with 302,905 D-FW viewers before ABC took over from 8 to 10 p.m. with Grey’s Anatomy (213,410) and Scandal (220,294). The same trio also won among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
CBS’ opening Marquette-Miami game averaged 82,610 total viewers. The nightcap, Syracuse vs. Indiana, fared a bit better with 96,379. On TBS, the first game between Ohio State and Arizona drew 41,305 viewers before Wichita State and LaSalle matched that number.
NBC’s biggest draw, a 7 p.m. episode of Community, had 55,074 viewers. The Peacock ran last all night in both ratings measurements among the Big Four broadcast networks. NBC also was beaten from 7 to 8 p.m. by The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, which also outpointed basketball in that hour among 18-to-49-year-olds.
TXA21’s Texas Rangers pre-season game and Fox Sports Southwest’s Dallas Mavericks-Indiana Pacers face-off both averaged 61,958 total viewers.
In Thursday’s local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again ran the table at 6 a.m. and added a doubleheader win at 5 p.m. WFAA8 topped the total viewer Nielsens at 6 p.m., but NBC5 was tops with 25-to-54-year-olds.
CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. editions were preempted by basketball coverage.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Round 2 of the NCAA basketball tourney fell to Fox and ABC Thursday night while NBC’s ratings barely dribbled in.
Fox’s American Idol results hour easily won the 7 p.m. hour with 302,905 D-FW viewers before ABC took over from 8 to 10 p.m. with Grey’s Anatomy (213,410) and Scandal (220,294). The same trio also won among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
CBS’ opening Marquette-Miami game averaged 82,610 total viewers. The nightcap, Syracuse vs. Indiana, fared a bit better with 96,379. On TBS, the first game between Ohio State and Arizona drew 41,305 viewers before Wichita State and LaSalle matched that number.
NBC’s biggest draw, a 7 p.m. episode of Community, had 55,074 viewers. The Peacock ran last all night in both ratings measurements among the Big Four broadcast networks. NBC also was beaten from 7 to 8 p.m. by The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, which also outpointed basketball in that hour among 18-to-49-year-olds.
TXA21’s Texas Rangers pre-season game and Fox Sports Southwest’s Dallas Mavericks-Indiana Pacers face-off both averaged 61,958 total viewers.
In Thursday’s local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again ran the table at 6 a.m. and added a doubleheader win at 5 p.m. WFAA8 topped the total viewer Nielsens at 6 p.m., but NBC5 was tops with 25-to-54-year-olds.
CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. editions were preempted by basketball coverage.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., March 27) -- a diminished Idol stll good enough
03/28/13 12:36 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Fox’s American Idol no longer is potent enough to dominate its competition. Not even when CBS’ Criminal Minds punts with a repeat.
Wednesday’s two-hour performance edition still won its time slot in D-FW, though, drawing an average of 282,252 viewers from 7 to 9 p.m.
CBS’ Survivor: Caramoan ran a close second in the 7 p.m. hour with 261,600 viewers before Criminal Minds took the 8 p.m. silver with 192,758 viewers while NBC’s new Law & Order: SVU ran just a bit behind (178,989 viewers).
Idol also topped the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old measurement with 127,576 viewers in this age range. But both of Idol’s totals paled next to those of NBC’s The Voice, which had 468,126 total viewers and 258,341 within the 18-to-49 motherlode for Monday’s two-hour midseason return.
Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast had the most total viewers in that hour -- 213,410 -- but NBC’s new episode of Chicago Fire had the edge with 18-to-49-year-olds.
ABC’s lineup of first-run attractions was a night-long roller coaster ride, particularly in the 18-to-49 demographic. The Middle started off with 47,841 viewers in this age range, followed by The Neighbors (12,758); Modern Family (76,546); Suburgatory (22,326) and Nashville (63,788).
CW33’s 9 p.m. comedy-laced Nightcap newscast had its best showing in recent memory among 18-to-49-year-olds. Helped by a decent lead-in from Supernatural (44,652 viewers in this age range), Nightcap kept 25,515 of ‘em.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the front end of D magazine’s morning duo gingerly ventured out of “hashmarks” territory (no measurable audience). D: The Broadcast had 1,377 total viewers in the 9 a.m. hour before D Living went unwatched, according to Nielsen. Both shows had no measurable viewership among 18-to-49-year-olds.
In Wednesday’s four-way local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 swept both the 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. competitions while adding a 6 p.m. first among 25-to-54-year-olds. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Fox’s American Idol no longer is potent enough to dominate its competition. Not even when CBS’ Criminal Minds punts with a repeat.
Wednesday’s two-hour performance edition still won its time slot in D-FW, though, drawing an average of 282,252 viewers from 7 to 9 p.m.
CBS’ Survivor: Caramoan ran a close second in the 7 p.m. hour with 261,600 viewers before Criminal Minds took the 8 p.m. silver with 192,758 viewers while NBC’s new Law & Order: SVU ran just a bit behind (178,989 viewers).
Idol also topped the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old measurement with 127,576 viewers in this age range. But both of Idol’s totals paled next to those of NBC’s The Voice, which had 468,126 total viewers and 258,341 within the 18-to-49 motherlode for Monday’s two-hour midseason return.
Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast had the most total viewers in that hour -- 213,410 -- but NBC’s new episode of Chicago Fire had the edge with 18-to-49-year-olds.
ABC’s lineup of first-run attractions was a night-long roller coaster ride, particularly in the 18-to-49 demographic. The Middle started off with 47,841 viewers in this age range, followed by The Neighbors (12,758); Modern Family (76,546); Suburgatory (22,326) and Nashville (63,788).
CW33’s 9 p.m. comedy-laced Nightcap newscast had its best showing in recent memory among 18-to-49-year-olds. Helped by a decent lead-in from Supernatural (44,652 viewers in this age range), Nightcap kept 25,515 of ‘em.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the front end of D magazine’s morning duo gingerly ventured out of “hashmarks” territory (no measurable audience). D: The Broadcast had 1,377 total viewers in the 9 a.m. hour before D Living went unwatched, according to Nielsen. Both shows had no measurable viewership among 18-to-49-year-olds.
In Wednesday’s four-way local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 swept both the 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. competitions while adding a 6 p.m. first among 25-to-54-year-olds. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., March 26) -- trading punches with Voice and NCIS
03/27/13 10:32 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Tuesday’s one-hour performance edition of NBC’s The Voice ran head-on into CBS’ super-powered NCIS in Tuesday’s 7 p.m. hour. Both shows collected insurance claims.
NCIS ranked as the night’s overall most-watched show with 488,778 D-FW viewers while The Voice ranked a rock-solid second with 399,285.
Those finishes were reversed in a big way with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. The Voice amassed 220,069 compared to 121,197 for NCIS, which usually wins in both measurements.
CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles nipped ABC’s Dancing with the Stars results show at 8 p.m. by a score of 330,442 total viewers to 323,557. But Dancing had the most 18-to-49-year-olds.
ABC’s Body of Proof won the 9 p.m. hour in both ratings measurements, with 234,063 total viewers and 63,788 in the 18-to-49 motherlode.
ABC’s second installment of Splash took a ratings dive after a decent start last week. It ranked fourth at 7 p.m. in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. But NBC’s Smash, soon being transferred to Saturdays for its death knells, bottomed out even deeper. It had just 48,189 total viewers, with 12,758 in the 18-to-49 age range.
Over on TNT, the Dallas Mavericks’ late-starting gut-check overtime home win against the potent Clippers picked up ratings steam in late night. The 10:45 p.m. to midnight portion of the game averaged 103,263 total viewers.
KTXD-TV’s (Ch. 47) The Texas Daily also has showed some signs of life of late. Tuesday’s 6 p.m. live edition had 34,421 total viewers after inheriting 48,180 from a 5:30 p.m. rerun of The Rifleman.
D magazine’s 9 to 11 a.m. offerings on KTXD remain in a ratings coffin, though. Both D: The Broadcast and D Living logged their usual “hashmarks” (no measurable audience).
In Tuesday’s four-way local news derby results, WFAA8 topped the 10 p.m. Nielsens in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 remained dominant at 6 a.m. with twin wins and also won at 5 and 6 p.m. in the 25-to-54 demographic. CBS11 had the 6 p.m. gold in total viewers and NBC5 topped that measurement at 5 p.m.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Tuesday’s one-hour performance edition of NBC’s The Voice ran head-on into CBS’ super-powered NCIS in Tuesday’s 7 p.m. hour. Both shows collected insurance claims.
NCIS ranked as the night’s overall most-watched show with 488,778 D-FW viewers while The Voice ranked a rock-solid second with 399,285.
Those finishes were reversed in a big way with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. The Voice amassed 220,069 compared to 121,197 for NCIS, which usually wins in both measurements.
CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles nipped ABC’s Dancing with the Stars results show at 8 p.m. by a score of 330,442 total viewers to 323,557. But Dancing had the most 18-to-49-year-olds.
ABC’s Body of Proof won the 9 p.m. hour in both ratings measurements, with 234,063 total viewers and 63,788 in the 18-to-49 motherlode.
ABC’s second installment of Splash took a ratings dive after a decent start last week. It ranked fourth at 7 p.m. in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. But NBC’s Smash, soon being transferred to Saturdays for its death knells, bottomed out even deeper. It had just 48,189 total viewers, with 12,758 in the 18-to-49 age range.
Over on TNT, the Dallas Mavericks’ late-starting gut-check overtime home win against the potent Clippers picked up ratings steam in late night. The 10:45 p.m. to midnight portion of the game averaged 103,263 total viewers.
KTXD-TV’s (Ch. 47) The Texas Daily also has showed some signs of life of late. Tuesday’s 6 p.m. live edition had 34,421 total viewers after inheriting 48,180 from a 5:30 p.m. rerun of The Rifleman.
D magazine’s 9 to 11 a.m. offerings on KTXD remain in a ratings coffin, though. Both D: The Broadcast and D Living logged their usual “hashmarks” (no measurable audience).
In Tuesday’s four-way local news derby results, WFAA8 topped the 10 p.m. Nielsens in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 remained dominant at 6 a.m. with twin wins and also won at 5 and 6 p.m. in the 25-to-54 demographic. CBS11 had the 6 p.m. gold in total viewers and NBC5 topped that measurement at 5 p.m.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
NBC5 reporter Ellen Goldberg calls it a day -- and a night
03/26/13 05:33 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
NBC5 reporter Ellen Goldberg, a veteran of six years on the nightside beat, has decided to leave the Fort Worth-based station to try something new.
“After 6 great years, I have decided to leave KXAS to pursue other opportunities,” she said in a message to station staffers Tuesday. “I am grateful to KXAS and the talented team of professionals I have worked alongside. Many of you are like family to me, so that made the decision extremely difficult. Dallas is home for me now, so I’m not going anywhere. I’m excited about several future opportunities, but my immediate plans are to take a little time to enjoy life.”
Goldberg joined NBC5 in March 2007 from KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, NM. The Tulane University grad had been a staple on the station’s 10 p.m. newscasts as a resourceful and dogged general assignments reporter.
NBC5’s vice president of news, Susan Tully, said that Goldberg’s last official day was Monday of this week.
“Ellen wants to take the next steps toward growing her career and we wish her all the success she deserves,” Tully said in a memo. “Ellen covered and broke many stories in her tenure with us.”
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Monday, March 25) -- return of The Voice also puts NBC back among living
03/26/13 09:34 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
NBC’s down-and-out midseason took a decided upturn Monday night with the return of The Voice against potent competition on all three of its main rivals.
Two new judges, Usher and Shakira, joined the mix to the tune of 468,126 D-FW viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot. That’s far better than Fox’s American Idol’s performance this season. And among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, The Voice soared well beyond even AMC’s The Walking Dead. An off-the-charts 258,341 viewers in this age range made The Voice their choice, with a peak crowd of 299,804 for the closing 15 minutes.
ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and Fox’s The Following both had respectable numbers in the total viewers measurement. But their 268,484 viewers apiece were minuscule compared to The Voice.
CBS’ first-run sitcom lineup for the most part lagged, with How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement placing third ahead of Fox’s Bones from 7 to 8 p.m. before 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly fell to fourth.
Fox’s pair of dramas had the fewest 18-to-49-year-olds from 7 to 9 p.m. among the Big Four networks, with Dancing slipping to third place.
NBC’s other big new returnee, Revolution, plummeted to 192,758 total viewers in the 9 p.m. hour. That put it in third place behind ABC’s Castle (254,715 viewers) and CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 (220,294). But Revolution edged Castle for the 9 p.m. top spot among 18-to-49-year-olds by a score of 95,682 to 89,303.
All of this was bad news for TNT’s Dallas, which had its smallest audience to date in the D-FW market. Doing the best they can without the late Larry Hagman, the remaining Ewings and their rivals had just 96,379 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour. Only 41,462 were in the 18-to-49 motherlode.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the 6 p.m. live edition of Texas Daily had one of its bigger audiences to date. Coming off 34,421 viewers for the preceding 5:30 p.m. rerun of The Rifleman, the baby boomer-aimed news hour held on to 13,768 of ‘em. That’s not a lot. But it beats the “hashmarks” (no measurable audience) Monday for D magazine’s 9 to 11 a.m. menu of D: The Broadcast and D Living. Both programs have very seldom ventured out of this territory since their Feb. 18th debuts.
Another home-grown product, CW33’s struggling, comedy-laced 9 p.m. Nightcap News, showed a pulse with 12,758 viewers in the key 18-to-49 demographic. The program rarely improves on its CW network lead-in, but this time it did better than an 8 p.m. Hart of Dixie rerun.
Here are Monday’s four-way local news derby results.
WFAA8 ran first at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again swept the 6 a.m. competitions, with WFAA8 teeter-tottering to fourth place finishes in both measurements behind long dormant but slowly gaining CBS11.
CBS11 had the most viewers at 6 p.m., with Fox4 tops among 25-to-54-year-olds. Fox4 logged twin wins at 5 p.m.
D-FW NEWS NOTES:
Former longtime NBC5 anchor Mike Snyder has a bit part -- as a news anchor -- in the opening minutes of the feature film Olympus Has Fallen. And the station’s veteran sports anchor, Newy Scruggs, has been named to host the new weekday Voices of the Game program on NBC Sports Radio.
The show airs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but NBC Sports Radio does not yet have a station in the D-FW market. Nor is it on satellite radio. So for now, Scruggs’ show can only be heard on nbcsportsradio.com, starting April 1st. His guest host on the Thursday, April 4th show will be former Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine.
Scruggs will continue to anchor NBC5’s weekday 6 and 10 p.m. sports segments.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
NBC’s down-and-out midseason took a decided upturn Monday night with the return of The Voice against potent competition on all three of its main rivals.
Two new judges, Usher and Shakira, joined the mix to the tune of 468,126 D-FW viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot. That’s far better than Fox’s American Idol’s performance this season. And among advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds, The Voice soared well beyond even AMC’s The Walking Dead. An off-the-charts 258,341 viewers in this age range made The Voice their choice, with a peak crowd of 299,804 for the closing 15 minutes.
ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and Fox’s The Following both had respectable numbers in the total viewers measurement. But their 268,484 viewers apiece were minuscule compared to The Voice.
CBS’ first-run sitcom lineup for the most part lagged, with How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement placing third ahead of Fox’s Bones from 7 to 8 p.m. before 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly fell to fourth.
Fox’s pair of dramas had the fewest 18-to-49-year-olds from 7 to 9 p.m. among the Big Four networks, with Dancing slipping to third place.
NBC’s other big new returnee, Revolution, plummeted to 192,758 total viewers in the 9 p.m. hour. That put it in third place behind ABC’s Castle (254,715 viewers) and CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 (220,294). But Revolution edged Castle for the 9 p.m. top spot among 18-to-49-year-olds by a score of 95,682 to 89,303.
All of this was bad news for TNT’s Dallas, which had its smallest audience to date in the D-FW market. Doing the best they can without the late Larry Hagman, the remaining Ewings and their rivals had just 96,379 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour. Only 41,462 were in the 18-to-49 motherlode.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the 6 p.m. live edition of Texas Daily had one of its bigger audiences to date. Coming off 34,421 viewers for the preceding 5:30 p.m. rerun of The Rifleman, the baby boomer-aimed news hour held on to 13,768 of ‘em. That’s not a lot. But it beats the “hashmarks” (no measurable audience) Monday for D magazine’s 9 to 11 a.m. menu of D: The Broadcast and D Living. Both programs have very seldom ventured out of this territory since their Feb. 18th debuts.
Another home-grown product, CW33’s struggling, comedy-laced 9 p.m. Nightcap News, showed a pulse with 12,758 viewers in the key 18-to-49 demographic. The program rarely improves on its CW network lead-in, but this time it did better than an 8 p.m. Hart of Dixie rerun.
Here are Monday’s four-way local news derby results.
WFAA8 ran first at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again swept the 6 a.m. competitions, with WFAA8 teeter-tottering to fourth place finishes in both measurements behind long dormant but slowly gaining CBS11.
CBS11 had the most viewers at 6 p.m., with Fox4 tops among 25-to-54-year-olds. Fox4 logged twin wins at 5 p.m.
D-FW NEWS NOTES:
Former longtime NBC5 anchor Mike Snyder has a bit part -- as a news anchor -- in the opening minutes of the feature film Olympus Has Fallen. And the station’s veteran sports anchor, Newy Scruggs, has been named to host the new weekday Voices of the Game program on NBC Sports Radio.
The show airs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but NBC Sports Radio does not yet have a station in the D-FW market. Nor is it on satellite radio. So for now, Scruggs’ show can only be heard on nbcsportsradio.com, starting April 1st. His guest host on the Thursday, April 4th show will be former Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine.
Scruggs will continue to anchor NBC5’s weekday 6 and 10 p.m. sports segments.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Corning's Daybreak sex talk spot shouldn't be a keeper
03/25/13 10:52 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Co-anchor Ron Corning of WFAA8’s Daybreak has been the focal point of station promotions ever since a September 2011 spot in which veteran sports anchor Dale Hansen gave the kid some tips on getting his name out there.
The saturation “Corning In The Morning” campaign helped to boost Daybreak’s ratings while the show itself took a decidedly more comedic approach. Slap-happy, some might say. Particularly in the most-watched 6 to 7 a.m. hour.
Ratings momentum lately has slowed, though, with CBS11 now promoting itself as D-FW’s “fastest-growing” waker-upper. In the February “sweeps” ratings, fourth-place CBS11 in fact did make the biggest ratings gains in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
CBS11’s early riser also is going for more laughs with its new anchor team of Brendan Higgins and Adrienne Bankert. But station promos continue to take a team approach, with meteorologist Garry Seith and traffic reporter Whitney Drolen also included.
WFAA8 in comparison has been all in on Corning, with co-anchor Cynthia Izaguirre, weathercaster Greg Fields and traffic anchor Alexa Conomos basically beside the point. Izaguirre knows the feeling from the opposite end, too. Her previous co-anchor, Chris Flanagan, was an invisible man before Corning’s arrival while “Izzy” got the big promotional push. Flanagan, who never had a single spot tailored for him, is now with Cleveland’s WEWS-TV.
The early push for Corning, who’s now been in the early morning chair for two years, was bracingly inventive and for the most part funny. WFAA8’s follow-up “More Ron!” campaign had less going for it.
But Daybreak’s still unfolding “You Can Count On Us” campaign, starring Corning of course, has reached the full-blown creepy stage in a new spot that finds him using Barbie and Ken dolls (or a facsimile thereof) to give two elementary school kids a sex talk.
“And so, um, yeah, that is where babies come from. Any questions?” a cheery Corning asks while the little girl in particular is both stunned and speechless.
A dopey-looking “Dad” next pops his head in to ask Corning, “Is it over?” Corning gives him the thumbs up and then play-acts a little more -- here’s where it gets even creepier -- while the on-screen print reads, “Ron Gave My Kids ‘The Talk.’ “
WFAA8, the self-appointed “Family First” station, really should know better than this latest Corning-centric spot. It’s supposed to communicate Daybreak’s determination to do it all for its viewers. Instead it leaves a bad taste by being in such very bad taste.
Corning is a talented, personality-plus anchor. But his station seems to be positioning him for a big fall by over-selling him at the expense of his colleagues. Now he’s also being made to look ridiculous in a spot that at best trivializes sex education. There are some places a TV station just shouldn’t go. This is Exhibit A.
Meanwhile, Izaguirre obviously has been busy as a first-time mother of twins no less. They’re nearly a year old now, and it seems time to bring her back into the promotional picture. The rest of the early morning team also might benefit from a little attention.
Corning has been positioned as Daybreak’s star player -- basically to the exclusion of everyone else -- for the past year and a half. But ratings lately have stalled while Fox4’s far more team-oriented Good Day runs away in the ratings, particularly in the key news demographic of 25-to-54-year-olds.
Here’s the sex talk spot, which perhaps also can serve as a wake-up call for WFAA8’s promotions department. It’s time to get with the program -- which isn’t all Corning and no longer should be promoted as such.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 22-24) -- NCAA hoops dunks NASCAR
03/25/13 09:38 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Buoyed by close games, marquee teams and trips to the Sweet 16, CBS’ Sunday NCAA hoops coverage out-raced Fox’s competing NASCAR go-around.
The three games, climaxing with Kansas-North Carolina, pushed 60 Minutes’ starting time back to about 6:40 p.m. Audiences peaked between 3:45 and 4 p.m. and 6:15 and 6:30 p.m., when basketball averaged 220,294 D-FW viewers. NASCAR’s biggest crowd came between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m., when 206,526 watched. Another post-race scuffle ensued after a slam-bang finish.
Basketball for the most part also had the edge with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, although NASCAR won in a few 15-minute increments. But Sunday’s 18-to-49 monster again was AMC’s The Walking Dead. It lured 175,417 viewers in this key demographic, doubling the haul of any competing program in the 8 to 9 p.m. slot.
Among the Big Four broadcast networks, though, NBC’s All-Star Celebrity Apprentice continued to run strong. It commanded the 8 to 10 p.m. slot with 18-to-49-year-olds opposite the prime-time fare on ABC, CBS and Fox.
CBS’ NCAA basketball coverage was Saturday’s most-watched attraction in both ratings measurements. But Friday’s prime-time hoops took a bad whipping. ABC’s 7 to 8 p.m. season finales of Last Man Standing and Malibu Country led the way with 137,684 viewers each.
Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen helped itself to Friday night’s biggest 18-to-49 haul while hoops ran fourth in total viewers and third overall in TV’s key demographic. (NBC’s Grimm took the bronze from 8 to 9 p.m., but basketball beat the Peacock’s Fashion Star and Rock Center with Brian Williams among 18-to-49-year-olds.)
Fox4 muscled up in Friday’s local news derby results, winning at 6 a.m. and at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The station also added 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. wins in total viewers.
WFAA8 had the other golds, running first at 6 and 10 p.m. in total viewers. CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. editions were preempted by basketball.
Email your comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Buoyed by close games, marquee teams and trips to the Sweet 16, CBS’ Sunday NCAA hoops coverage out-raced Fox’s competing NASCAR go-around.
The three games, climaxing with Kansas-North Carolina, pushed 60 Minutes’ starting time back to about 6:40 p.m. Audiences peaked between 3:45 and 4 p.m. and 6:15 and 6:30 p.m., when basketball averaged 220,294 D-FW viewers. NASCAR’s biggest crowd came between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m., when 206,526 watched. Another post-race scuffle ensued after a slam-bang finish.
Basketball for the most part also had the edge with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, although NASCAR won in a few 15-minute increments. But Sunday’s 18-to-49 monster again was AMC’s The Walking Dead. It lured 175,417 viewers in this key demographic, doubling the haul of any competing program in the 8 to 9 p.m. slot.
Among the Big Four broadcast networks, though, NBC’s All-Star Celebrity Apprentice continued to run strong. It commanded the 8 to 10 p.m. slot with 18-to-49-year-olds opposite the prime-time fare on ABC, CBS and Fox.
CBS’ NCAA basketball coverage was Saturday’s most-watched attraction in both ratings measurements. But Friday’s prime-time hoops took a bad whipping. ABC’s 7 to 8 p.m. season finales of Last Man Standing and Malibu Country led the way with 137,684 viewers each.
Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen helped itself to Friday night’s biggest 18-to-49 haul while hoops ran fourth in total viewers and third overall in TV’s key demographic. (NBC’s Grimm took the bronze from 8 to 9 p.m., but basketball beat the Peacock’s Fashion Star and Rock Center with Brian Williams among 18-to-49-year-olds.)
Fox4 muscled up in Friday’s local news derby results, winning at 6 a.m. and at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The station also added 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. wins in total viewers.
WFAA8 had the other golds, running first at 6 and 10 p.m. in total viewers. CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. editions were preempted by basketball.
Email your comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., March 21) -- oops for hoops
03/22/13 09:51 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
D-FW is not a big college basketball market. And with no Texas teams in play, that truth became even more self-evident on opening day of the NCAA tournament.
The two nighttime games on CBS averaged 68,842 and 55,074 viewers compared to the half-million for a typical new Thursday episode of The Big Bang Theory. Thursday’s tourney games on TNT, TBS and Tru TV drew even smaller crowds.
Basketball did beat NBC’s 7 to 9 p.m. sitcom lineup, which consisted of two new 1600 Penn episodes, a first-run Community and a rerun of The Office. But hoops lost to The CW’s The Vampire Diaries , TXA21’s Texas Rangers-Los Angeles Angels spring training game and all prime-time programming on Fox and ABC.
Thursday’s respective 7 to 10 p.m. time slot winners were Fox’s American Idol (247,831 viewers), ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (254,715) and ABC’s Scandal (247,831). Those three shows also won among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
In the local news derby results, WFAA8 ran first at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 had another doubleheader sweep at 6 a.m. and also took both of the 5 p.m. golds. WFAA8 had twin wins at 6 p.m.
CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts were preempted by basketball.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
D-FW is not a big college basketball market. And with no Texas teams in play, that truth became even more self-evident on opening day of the NCAA tournament.
The two nighttime games on CBS averaged 68,842 and 55,074 viewers compared to the half-million for a typical new Thursday episode of The Big Bang Theory. Thursday’s tourney games on TNT, TBS and Tru TV drew even smaller crowds.
Basketball did beat NBC’s 7 to 9 p.m. sitcom lineup, which consisted of two new 1600 Penn episodes, a first-run Community and a rerun of The Office. But hoops lost to The CW’s The Vampire Diaries , TXA21’s Texas Rangers-Los Angeles Angels spring training game and all prime-time programming on Fox and ABC.
Thursday’s respective 7 to 10 p.m. time slot winners were Fox’s American Idol (247,831 viewers), ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (254,715) and ABC’s Scandal (247,831). Those three shows also won among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
In the local news derby results, WFAA8 ran first at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 had another doubleheader sweep at 6 a.m. and also took both of the 5 p.m. golds. WFAA8 had twin wins at 6 p.m.
CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts were preempted by basketball.
Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., March 20) -- Idol, CSI in drivers' seats
03/21/13 12:11 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Fox and CBS again divided Wednesday’s prime-time spoils while their principal broadcast rivals ate table scraps.
American Idol’s two-hour performance edition paced the 7 to 9 p.m. D-FW Nielsens with 330,442 viewers. CBS made it a fairly close fight with 240,947 viewers for Survivor: Caramoan before rising to 323,557 for Criminal Minds.
CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (261,600 viewers) then won the 9 p.m. hour on the same day its network announced a fall 2013 return for Season 14. Ted Danson and all of the principal cast members have re-upped with new contracts.
Idol and CSI also won their time slots with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
FX’s 9 p.m. episode of its critically acclaimed The Americans drew 61,958 viewers in that hour. Subsequent DVR viewership usually swells that figure by at least half.
In the local news derby results, CBS11 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions while CBS11 enjoyed the rarefied air of two third-place finishes. At the bottom was WFAA8, which on Friday had finished first in both ratings measurements for the first time in 2013.
Fox4 also ran the table at 5 p.m. and added a 6 p.m. gold in the 25-to-54 demographic. CBS11 had the most viewers at 6 p.m.
Email your questions or comments to: unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Fox and CBS again divided Wednesday’s prime-time spoils while their principal broadcast rivals ate table scraps.
American Idol’s two-hour performance edition paced the 7 to 9 p.m. D-FW Nielsens with 330,442 viewers. CBS made it a fairly close fight with 240,947 viewers for Survivor: Caramoan before rising to 323,557 for Criminal Minds.
CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (261,600 viewers) then won the 9 p.m. hour on the same day its network announced a fall 2013 return for Season 14. Ted Danson and all of the principal cast members have re-upped with new contracts.
Idol and CSI also won their time slots with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
FX’s 9 p.m. episode of its critically acclaimed The Americans drew 61,958 viewers in that hour. Subsequent DVR viewership usually swells that figure by at least half.
In the local news derby results, CBS11 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions while CBS11 enjoyed the rarefied air of two third-place finishes. At the bottom was WFAA8, which on Friday had finished first in both ratings measurements for the first time in 2013.
Fox4 also ran the table at 5 p.m. and added a 6 p.m. gold in the 25-to-54 demographic. CBS11 had the most viewers at 6 p.m.
Email your questions or comments to: unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., March 19) -- Splash submerged but still comes up for air
03/20/13 09:28 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Urp. One of the shallowest “reality competition” shows ever visited upon this planet -- ABC’s Splash -- predictably got drowned by CBS’ NCIS but still finished second in the 7 p.m. hour.
NCIS again was Tuesday’s biggest draw with 523,199 D-FW viewers in the prime-time leadoff slot. A smallish percentage of them -- 111,629 -- were advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. That was also the night’s biggest haul.
Splash included the likes of Louie Anderson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar submerging their dignities with high dives and belly flops while the hosts acted like they were competing for Olympic gold. But a sizable 192,758 total viewers tuned in, with 76,546 in the 18-to-49 motherlode. Fox’s usually formidable Hell’s Kitchen fell to third at 7 p.m. in both measurements.
CBS also won from 8 to 10 p.m. in total viewers with its regular crime lineup of NCIS: Los Angeles (440,589) and Golden Boy (234,063). NCIS: L.A. likewise won with 18-to-49-year-olds, but Golden Boy got bludgeoned in this key demographic by Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast -- 92,493 viewers to 57,409.
In Tuesday’s local news derby results, WFAA8 swept the 10 p.m. competitions in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 ran the table at both 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. The 6 p.m. wins went to CBS11 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
@unclebarkycom
Urp. One of the shallowest “reality competition” shows ever visited upon this planet -- ABC’s Splash -- predictably got drowned by CBS’ NCIS but still finished second in the 7 p.m. hour.
NCIS again was Tuesday’s biggest draw with 523,199 D-FW viewers in the prime-time leadoff slot. A smallish percentage of them -- 111,629 -- were advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. That was also the night’s biggest haul.
Splash included the likes of Louie Anderson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar submerging their dignities with high dives and belly flops while the hosts acted like they were competing for Olympic gold. But a sizable 192,758 total viewers tuned in, with 76,546 in the 18-to-49 motherlode. Fox’s usually formidable Hell’s Kitchen fell to third at 7 p.m. in both measurements.
CBS also won from 8 to 10 p.m. in total viewers with its regular crime lineup of NCIS: Los Angeles (440,589) and Golden Boy (234,063). NCIS: L.A. likewise won with 18-to-49-year-olds, but Golden Boy got bludgeoned in this key demographic by Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast -- 92,493 viewers to 57,409.
In Tuesday’s local news derby results, WFAA8 swept the 10 p.m. competitions in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 ran the table at both 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. The 6 p.m. wins went to CBS11 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
WFAA8's Watson makes a power play after 34 years of singular reporting
03/20/13 05:41 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
No one is indispensable, everyone is replaceable and time marches on.
It would be nice to exempt Brad Watson from all three of these. The 34-year WFAA8 veteran also seemed immovable before surprising management this week with his decision to move on and become communications director for Luminant Energy. His last day at the Dallas-based station will be sometime in mid-April. His first day dawned way back in January 1979.
Watson, 59, has specialized in political reporting during his later years with WFAA8. But he also held down the weekend anchor spot for most of the 1990s and has reported on major breaking news events ranging from the Branch Davidian compound standoff in Waco to Hurricane Katrina. He was still in the saddle, returning from a story, when reached Tuesday evening by phone.
“I wasn’t looking for it, but it was something that came to me . . . I wouldn’t say it was the great lure of an 8 to 5 job,” Watson said of being the Dallas-based principal spokesman for Texas’ largest electrical power generator. “There was nothing negative at the TV station. I wasn’t pursuing something out of unhappiness. It was more a case of looking at something I really found fascinating. The people at the company are smart as a whip. I’ve got a lot of work years left, it’s an important position and it’ll be fascinating, interesting work.”
As previously posted, Watson joins a raft of experienced WFAA8 news staffers who have left the station in just the past year-and-a-half for public relations positions. Chris Hawes, Craig Civale, Cynthia Vega and Casey Norton all resigned. And longtime anchor-reporter Debbie Denmon became the main media liaison for Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins after the station declined to renew her contract in July of last year.
Watson, who still has about a year left on his WFAA8 deal, has often been stonewalled as a reporter. He pledges to be media-friendly in his new post.
“I think these positions really have evolved over time,” he said. “You’ve got to get out and talk to reporters. You can’t have a bunker mentality. You have to get your industry’s point of view out there. Because if you don’t, there are others who will fill that vacuum. You’ve got to facilitate, not obfuscate. The ‘old school’ type would phone you and make it personal or call you a profanity. It’s short-sighted, it’s ineffective and I don’t think it does your company or your business any benefit at all.”
One of the campaigns, which he won’t name, used that tactic on him during the contentious 2012 U.S. Senate race, Watson said. But his most famous dustup came in April 2011 during a brief sit-down interview in Washington with President Obama.
Watson and local TV reporters from Denver, Indianapolis and Raleigh were each given seven-minute sit-downs with the president. In his subsequent condensed, taped report, Watson told viewers that “after the interview, Mr. Obama pointed out that he doesn’t like an interviewer challenging his comments.”
The president then was shown telling Watson, “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview.”
“All right, sir,” Watson replied on-camera. “Thank you.”
One of their flash points came when Obama was asked, ”Why do you think you’re so unpopular in Texas?”
The president said progress was being made after his 2008 presidential campaign “lost by a few percentage points in Texas.”
“Well, you lost by about 10,” Watson corrected him. And he was right about that. Republican John McCain beat Obama by a margin of 55.39 to 46.63 percent.
There were other less than genial exchanges, although WFAA8’s subsequent posting of the complete unedited interview showed that Obama had a tendency to filibuster as well as interrupt Watson, who was hardly a provocateur.
Watson and former WFAA8 news director Michael Valentine declined to comment at the time. Watson is now ready to talk.
“I agree that if one looks at the whole interview, it really was underwhelming,” he said Tuesday. “I didn’t do anything different from what I saw other Washington reporters do in their interviews. I knew I was going to be flying in very rarefied, stratified air, and didn’t have much time.”
The president perhaps expected an easier time -- or perhaps even a quartet of patsies from Podunk when the locals sat down with him. But “an interview is supposed to be a conversation,” Watson said. “I think maybe his staff could have prepped him better. I thought we’d have more give-and-take, but he seemed perturbed at the end. He showed a flash of temperament, and so the editorial call was made to put it in at the end. I went there to do a news interview. Maybe he didn’t think it was supposed to be like that.”
Watson and the president ended up making national news, with excerpts from their interview dissected by The O’Reilly Factor, The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post and many others.
“It’s a very tough position to be in,” Watson said. “It’s just the president and me. And then you get swept up in the partisan stuff. It was uncomfortable for me. There are people who take that and then wrap their own partisan analysis in it. But that comes with the territory.”
Watson, tall, bass-voiced and generally buttoned-down on the air, went against that grain during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. In a highly unusual Labor Day report, he used dolls furnished by his two daughters and a friend to illustrate the race among incumbent Rick Perry and challengers Kinky Friedman, Chris Bell and Carol Keeton Strayhorn.
“I wanted to do something that was kind of innovative and clever . . . instead of just doing a campaign strategy piece that Wolf Blitzer might do,” Watson explained at the time. “I wouldn’t have done it if there hadn’t of been the Kinky (action) figure. So I wondered how we could do this without making it look cheesy or goofy. It had some nuggets of information in there and it got people’s attention. The thing that’s been remarkable to me is the voter apathy out there.”
Down the home stretch of his WFAA8 career, Watson anchored WFAA8’s Sunday Inside Texas Politics program. It attracted all of the city and state’s main players, prompting anchor Shelly Slater to call Watson “the pillar of Texas political journalism” during the station’s announcement of his departure.
He doesn’t know if the show will go on without him. “That’s up to them,” Watson said of WFAA8 management. (News director Carolyn Mungo could not immediately be reached for comment early Wednesday.)
“It’s been a wonderful run at WFAA,” he said. “I truly believe that our viewers have brains. I give them a lot of credit for doing their own thinking. So I always try to report straight down the middle. I don’t need any of this advocacy stuff. You treat everybody fairly and accurately. I’ve taken that as a real badge of honor.”
Time will tell whether Watson made the right choice by joining many of his former WFAA8 colleagues in the PR game. For now it looks like a bright, bracing new world.
“I was won over by them in the end,” he said of the Luminant Power people who wooed him. “It wasn’t my plan to be part of any trend. Life opens doors of opportunity when you least expect it.
“I thought about it a lot, and decided I’d like to try this.”
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Mon., March 15-18) -- Dancing tips scales in total viewers while Biggest Loser gains with 18-to-49-year-olds
03/19/13 04:37 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
NBC’s The Biggest Loser crowned its latest champ Monday night while ABC’s Dancing with the Stars stepped up to its 16th season.
Competing head to head from 7 to 9 p.m., each “reality competition” heavyweight won one, lost one. Dancing prevailed in total D-FW viewers with 351,094, making it the night’s overall biggest draw. But Loser won with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, luring 130,765 in handily beating Dancing (95,682).
Meanwhile, Fox’s The Following fell to 172,105 total viewers in the 8 p.m. hour. Among the Big Four broadcast networks, it beat only CBS’ competing 2 Broke Girls (151,452). And The Following was a distant fourth in its time slot with 18-to-49-year-olds. But Fox already has renewed its chilling killing field for next season, so fans have no immediate worries on that score.
Monday’s 9 p.m. hour was dominated in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds by ABC’s Castle (330,442 and 124,387 respectively). Over on TNT, the first post-Larry Hagman episode of Dallas drew 158,337 total viewers in the 8 p.m. hour.
On Sunday night, CBS’ 9 p.m. episode of The Mentalist led non-cable programming in total viewers with 268,484 while NBC’s All-Star Celebrity Apprentice drew more 18-to-49-year-olds -- 86,114 -- than any other Big Four broadcast network program. ABC’s new Red Widow had a particularly dismal showing in the 18-to-49 food group, with just 12,758 tuning in. Compare that to the 194,553 viewers in the 18-to-49 range who turned out for AMC’s 8 p.m. hour of The Walking Dead.
CBS’ one hour, 5 p.m. “March Madness” selection show attracted surprisingly little interest with 68,842 total viewers and only 19,136 in the 18-to-49 motherlode. Not quite bracket mania yet.
Friday’s prime-time Nielsen parade as usual was led by CBS’ Blue Bloods, with 282,252 total viewers in the 9 p.m. slot. ABC’s 20/20 drew the most 18-to-49-year-olds (60,599).
Here are the weekday local news derby results:
Monday -- WFAA8 rolled to comfortable twin wins at 10 p.m. in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The ABC station also swept the 5 p.m. competitions.
Fox4 ran the table 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.
Friday -- WFAA8 ran first in both ratings measurements at 10 p.m. while also pulling off its first 6 a.m. sweep of the year by twice edging the usual kingpin, Fox4.
CBS11 took both of the 6 p.m. golds, another rarity. NBC5 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m., but WFAA8 and CBS11 shared the lead in the 25-to-54 demographic. Fox4 and NBC5 were both just a hair behind.
@unclebarkycom
NBC’s The Biggest Loser crowned its latest champ Monday night while ABC’s Dancing with the Stars stepped up to its 16th season.
Competing head to head from 7 to 9 p.m., each “reality competition” heavyweight won one, lost one. Dancing prevailed in total D-FW viewers with 351,094, making it the night’s overall biggest draw. But Loser won with advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, luring 130,765 in handily beating Dancing (95,682).
Meanwhile, Fox’s The Following fell to 172,105 total viewers in the 8 p.m. hour. Among the Big Four broadcast networks, it beat only CBS’ competing 2 Broke Girls (151,452). And The Following was a distant fourth in its time slot with 18-to-49-year-olds. But Fox already has renewed its chilling killing field for next season, so fans have no immediate worries on that score.
Monday’s 9 p.m. hour was dominated in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds by ABC’s Castle (330,442 and 124,387 respectively). Over on TNT, the first post-Larry Hagman episode of Dallas drew 158,337 total viewers in the 8 p.m. hour.
On Sunday night, CBS’ 9 p.m. episode of The Mentalist led non-cable programming in total viewers with 268,484 while NBC’s All-Star Celebrity Apprentice drew more 18-to-49-year-olds -- 86,114 -- than any other Big Four broadcast network program. ABC’s new Red Widow had a particularly dismal showing in the 18-to-49 food group, with just 12,758 tuning in. Compare that to the 194,553 viewers in the 18-to-49 range who turned out for AMC’s 8 p.m. hour of The Walking Dead.
CBS’ one hour, 5 p.m. “March Madness” selection show attracted surprisingly little interest with 68,842 total viewers and only 19,136 in the 18-to-49 motherlode. Not quite bracket mania yet.
Friday’s prime-time Nielsen parade as usual was led by CBS’ Blue Bloods, with 282,252 total viewers in the 9 p.m. slot. ABC’s 20/20 drew the most 18-to-49-year-olds (60,599).
Here are the weekday local news derby results:
Monday -- WFAA8 rolled to comfortable twin wins at 10 p.m. in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The ABC station also swept the 5 p.m. competitions.
Fox4 ran the table 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.
Friday -- WFAA8 ran first in both ratings measurements at 10 p.m. while also pulling off its first 6 a.m. sweep of the year by twice edging the usual kingpin, Fox4.
CBS11 took both of the 6 p.m. golds, another rarity. NBC5 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m., but WFAA8 and CBS11 shared the lead in the 25-to-54 demographic. Fox4 and NBC5 were both just a hair behind.
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed.-Thurs., March 13-14) -- haves dominate have nots
03/16/13 11:45 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
CBS and Fox took turns thrashing each other while ABC and NBC crashed and burned with mixes of originals and repeats.
Thursday's biggest draw again was CBS' The Big Bang Theory, with a new 7 p.m. episode drawing 481,894 D-FW viewers to torch the first half-hour of Fox's American Idol results show (247,831).
Idol then regrouped to edge CBS' Two and a Half Men from 7:30 to 8 p.m. before first-run hours of CBS' Person of Interest and Elementary romped to easy wins in the 8 to 10 p.m. slot. CBS replicated this performance among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, with Two and a Half Men the only runner-up.
NBC had new episodes of its four Thursday sitcoms from 7 to 9 p.m. All of them ran fourth in both ratings measurements among the Big Four broadcast networks, as did a 9 p.m. repeat of Law & Order: SVU. NBC's most-watched attraction, an 8 p.m. episode of The Office, had just 89,495 total viewers.
In Wednesday's prime-time Nielsens, Idol's two-hour performance edition comfortably won from 7 to 9 p.m. in both total viewers (323,557) and 18-to-49-year-olds (153,091). CBS went with repeats, save for a 7 p.m. episode of Survivor: Caramoan, which clocked in second with 240,947 total viewers and 54,220 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast, feasting on ABC, CBS and NBC reruns, rolled to twin wins at 9 p.m. with 220,294 total viewers 92,493 in the 18-to-49 range.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. bloc of D: The Broadcast and D Living kept an unwanted streak alive with "hashmarks" (no measurable) audience across all age groups. Thursday's edition of CW33's 9 p.m. Nightcap comedy news logged hashmarks in the 18-to-49 measurement after the CW networks' preceding Beauty and the Beast did likewise.
Here are the four-way local news derby results.
Wednesday -- Fox4 had a big day, crushing its 6 a.m. competitors in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
The station also ran the table at 5 p.m. and added 6 and 10 p.m. wins among 25-to-54-year-olds. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 10 p.m., as did WFAA8 at 6 p.m.
Thursday -- CBS11 swept the 10 p.m. competitions while Fox4 remained virtually invincible at 6 a.m. with another pair of runaway twin wins.
At 6 p.m., CBS11 had the most viewers while NBC5 and WFAA8 tied for the top spot with 25-to-54-year-olds. The Peacock and WFAA8 also tied for first place at 5 p.m. in total viewers, but NBC5 was alone atop the 25-to-54 measurement.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
CBS and Fox took turns thrashing each other while ABC and NBC crashed and burned with mixes of originals and repeats.
Thursday's biggest draw again was CBS' The Big Bang Theory, with a new 7 p.m. episode drawing 481,894 D-FW viewers to torch the first half-hour of Fox's American Idol results show (247,831).
Idol then regrouped to edge CBS' Two and a Half Men from 7:30 to 8 p.m. before first-run hours of CBS' Person of Interest and Elementary romped to easy wins in the 8 to 10 p.m. slot. CBS replicated this performance among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, with Two and a Half Men the only runner-up.
NBC had new episodes of its four Thursday sitcoms from 7 to 9 p.m. All of them ran fourth in both ratings measurements among the Big Four broadcast networks, as did a 9 p.m. repeat of Law & Order: SVU. NBC's most-watched attraction, an 8 p.m. episode of The Office, had just 89,495 total viewers.
In Wednesday's prime-time Nielsens, Idol's two-hour performance edition comfortably won from 7 to 9 p.m. in both total viewers (323,557) and 18-to-49-year-olds (153,091). CBS went with repeats, save for a 7 p.m. episode of Survivor: Caramoan, which clocked in second with 240,947 total viewers and 54,220 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast, feasting on ABC, CBS and NBC reruns, rolled to twin wins at 9 p.m. with 220,294 total viewers 92,493 in the 18-to-49 range.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. bloc of D: The Broadcast and D Living kept an unwanted streak alive with "hashmarks" (no measurable) audience across all age groups. Thursday's edition of CW33's 9 p.m. Nightcap comedy news logged hashmarks in the 18-to-49 measurement after the CW networks' preceding Beauty and the Beast did likewise.
Here are the four-way local news derby results.
Wednesday -- Fox4 had a big day, crushing its 6 a.m. competitors in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
The station also ran the table at 5 p.m. and added 6 and 10 p.m. wins among 25-to-54-year-olds. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 10 p.m., as did WFAA8 at 6 p.m.
Thursday -- CBS11 swept the 10 p.m. competitions while Fox4 remained virtually invincible at 6 a.m. with another pair of runaway twin wins.
At 6 p.m., CBS11 had the most viewers while NBC5 and WFAA8 tied for the top spot with 25-to-54-year-olds. The Peacock and WFAA8 also tied for first place at 5 p.m. in total viewers, but NBC5 was alone atop the 25-to-54 measurement.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., March 12) -- CBS/Fox trade prime-time sweeps
03/13/13 09:36 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Two helpings of tyrannical Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen gave Fox a feast of advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds Tuesday while CBS prevailed in total viewers with two repeats and a new Golden Boy.
These weren't just any old repeats, though. They were NCIS franchise repeats. So the original NCIS racked up prime-time's biggest overall audience (289,136 D-FW viewers) while its spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles, won the 8 p.m. slot with 282,252 viewers.
A first-run episode of Golden Boy, now staying on Tuesdays instead of moving to Fridays, ran first at 9 p.m. with 220,294 viewers.
Hell's Kitchen dominated the 18-to-49 Nielsens, with its second hour at 8 p.m. drawing the night's biggest haul of 111,629. Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast then won its slot by edging Golden Boy. NCIS dropped all the way to fourth in this key demographic during the 7 p.m. hour.
During daytime hours, D magazine's double shot of D: The Broadcast and D Living continued to chalk up "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) from 9 to 11 a.m. on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47). The station's 6 p.m. live edition of The Texas Daily and its 9:30 p.m. reprise also come up empty on Nielsen's scorecards.
CW33's 9 p.m. comedy newscast, Nightcap, fared little better, with 6,884 total viewers (in a market of 6.88 million) and hashmarks in the 18-to-49 demographic.
WFAA8's long-running Good Morning Texas also showed scant signs of life at 9 a.m., running far behind competing network and syndicated programming with just 20,653 viewers and 3,189 in the 18-to-49 age range.
It's tough for local programming, other than conventional newscasts, to gain any traction in today's very crowded D-FW market. But don't blame the messenger. We report the ratings ups as well. There just haven't been any lately.
On to the four-way local news derby results, where CBS11 ran the table at 10 p.m. with wins in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 notched another pair of wins at 6 a.m. while also running first at 5 and 6 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds.
NBC5 had the most total viewers at both 5 and 6 p.m.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Two helpings of tyrannical Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen gave Fox a feast of advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds Tuesday while CBS prevailed in total viewers with two repeats and a new Golden Boy.
These weren't just any old repeats, though. They were NCIS franchise repeats. So the original NCIS racked up prime-time's biggest overall audience (289,136 D-FW viewers) while its spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles, won the 8 p.m. slot with 282,252 viewers.
A first-run episode of Golden Boy, now staying on Tuesdays instead of moving to Fridays, ran first at 9 p.m. with 220,294 viewers.
Hell's Kitchen dominated the 18-to-49 Nielsens, with its second hour at 8 p.m. drawing the night's biggest haul of 111,629. Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast then won its slot by edging Golden Boy. NCIS dropped all the way to fourth in this key demographic during the 7 p.m. hour.
During daytime hours, D magazine's double shot of D: The Broadcast and D Living continued to chalk up "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) from 9 to 11 a.m. on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47). The station's 6 p.m. live edition of The Texas Daily and its 9:30 p.m. reprise also come up empty on Nielsen's scorecards.
CW33's 9 p.m. comedy newscast, Nightcap, fared little better, with 6,884 total viewers (in a market of 6.88 million) and hashmarks in the 18-to-49 demographic.
WFAA8's long-running Good Morning Texas also showed scant signs of life at 9 a.m., running far behind competing network and syndicated programming with just 20,653 viewers and 3,189 in the 18-to-49 age range.
It's tough for local programming, other than conventional newscasts, to gain any traction in today's very crowded D-FW market. But don't blame the messenger. We report the ratings ups as well. There just haven't been any lately.
On to the four-way local news derby results, where CBS11 ran the table at 10 p.m. with wins in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 notched another pair of wins at 6 a.m. while also running first at 5 and 6 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds.
NBC5 had the most total viewers at both 5 and 6 p.m.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., March 11) -- no bump-up for J.R.'s funeral episode
03/12/13 11:41 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
TNT's nicely done send-off for J.R. Ewing did nothing for Dallas' D-FW ratings Monday night.
The 8 p.m. farewell to the late Larry Hagman's signature character averaged 165,221 viewers, down a bit from the 172,105 who watched the previous Monday's show. The number of advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-olds -- 70,167 -- was the same for both episodes.
Dallas was soundly beaten in the 8 p.m. slot by Fox's The Following and the climactic hour of ABC's The Bachelor, in which Dallasite Sean Lowe asked Catherine Guidici to marry him. Both attractions had 254,715 viewers.
Dallas did edge NBC's second hour of The Biggest Loser (158,337 viewers) and CBS' sitcom reruns. But The Bachelor, Biggest Loser and The Following all had substantially more 18-to-49-year-olds than Dallas did.
The Bachelor's live 9 p.m. post-game show had more total viewers (261,600) than the show itself while also easily winning its time slot among 18-to-49-year-olds. Lowe now will go on to be a belated entrant on ABC's Dancing with the Stars.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the 9 to 11 a.m. D magazine combo of D: The Broadcast and D Living again had "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in both ratings measurements. Live appearances on both shows by Dallas star Linda Gray failed to move the needle.
The local news derby results were marked by a rare quartet of sweeps, with each of the four competitors in winners' circles.
WFAA8 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 had twin wins at 6 a.m., as did NBC5 at 5 p.m. and CBS11 at 6 p.m.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Homey 'n' hokey: "Come Home to Channel 5"
03/11/13 12:57 PM
Back before cable became a big threat and NBC took corporate control, LIN Broadcasting-owned KXAS-TV was simply called "Channel 5."
Here's a now very dated 1986 promo from times when the Fort Worth-based station was home to both Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection with Chuck Woolery. So why not "Come Home to Channel 5?" Because what else would you watch?
Ed Bark
@unclebarkycom
Here's a now very dated 1986 promo from times when the Fort Worth-based station was home to both Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection with Chuck Woolery. So why not "Come Home to Channel 5?" Because what else would you watch?
Ed Bark
@unclebarkycom
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 8-10) -- JT's SNL gives NBC rare midseaon highlight
03/11/13 10:31 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
NBC's all but barren midseason got a latenight lift over the weekend when Saturday Night Live soared on the strength of host Justin Timberlake and a gaggle of guest stars.
SNL averaged 213,410 D-FW viewers to easily rank as Saturday's most-watched TV attraction. Better yet for the Peacock, 137,144 of them were in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 wheelhouse. Drop-in guests included Steve Martin, Paul Simon, Dan Aykroyd, Candice Bergen, Tom Hanks, Martin Short and Alec Baldwin. Timbuh was his own musical guest.
On Sunday, CBS led from start to finish in prime-time (among the Big Four broadcast networks) with a lineup of 60 Minutes, The Amazing Race, The Good Wife and The Mentalist. But Fox's 8 p.m. episode of Family Guy and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast broke through to win their time slots with 18-to-49-year-olds. D-FW ratings for AMC's The Walking Dead and History's twin punch of The Bible and Vikings were not immediately available.
ABC's third episode of Red Widow Sunday had prime-time's fewest number of 18-to-49-year-olds in the competition with CBS, NBC and Fox. That portends cancellation before the May "sweeps" get underway. Red Widow also ranked last among those four networks in total viewers with a paltry 75,726.
The Dallas Mavericks' Sunday road rout of the Minnesota Timberwolves, which started at 6 p.m. on Fox Sports Southwest, was also a ratings air ball with 55,074 total viewers.
Moving to Fridays, CBS got a solid overall performance from its new Golden Boy crime drama. It easily won the 8 p.m. slot with 220,294 viewers but fell to a distant third-place showing among 18-to-49-year-olds behind ABC's league-leading Shark Tank and Fox's runner-up Touch.
NBC whiffed with its entire Friday prime-time lineup, particularly the 7 p.m. Season 2 premiere of Fashion Star. It lagged well back in fourth place, with a threadbare 48,190 total viewers and just 15,947 in the 18-to-49 range.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. combo of D: The Broadcast and D Living remained in "hashmark" territory (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds.
But Monday March 11th's D: The Broadcast showed signs of life -- booking-wise at least -- by landing Linda Gray of Dallas as a guest. WFAA8's competing local hour, Good Morning Texas, offered "Time Saver Tips" and a purse segment during the time Gray chatted amiably with the D show's four co-hosts.
In Friday's local news derby results, CBS11 topped the 10 p.m. field in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 as usual swept the 6 a.m. competitions, added a 6 p.m. win in the 25-to-54 demographic and tied WFAA8 for the 5 p.m. gold in that measurement.
CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m. WFAA8 and CBS11 tied for the 5 p.m. lead in total viewers.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
NBC's all but barren midseason got a latenight lift over the weekend when Saturday Night Live soared on the strength of host Justin Timberlake and a gaggle of guest stars.
SNL averaged 213,410 D-FW viewers to easily rank as Saturday's most-watched TV attraction. Better yet for the Peacock, 137,144 of them were in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 wheelhouse. Drop-in guests included Steve Martin, Paul Simon, Dan Aykroyd, Candice Bergen, Tom Hanks, Martin Short and Alec Baldwin. Timbuh was his own musical guest.
On Sunday, CBS led from start to finish in prime-time (among the Big Four broadcast networks) with a lineup of 60 Minutes, The Amazing Race, The Good Wife and The Mentalist. But Fox's 8 p.m. episode of Family Guy and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast broke through to win their time slots with 18-to-49-year-olds. D-FW ratings for AMC's The Walking Dead and History's twin punch of The Bible and Vikings were not immediately available.
ABC's third episode of Red Widow Sunday had prime-time's fewest number of 18-to-49-year-olds in the competition with CBS, NBC and Fox. That portends cancellation before the May "sweeps" get underway. Red Widow also ranked last among those four networks in total viewers with a paltry 75,726.
The Dallas Mavericks' Sunday road rout of the Minnesota Timberwolves, which started at 6 p.m. on Fox Sports Southwest, was also a ratings air ball with 55,074 total viewers.
Moving to Fridays, CBS got a solid overall performance from its new Golden Boy crime drama. It easily won the 8 p.m. slot with 220,294 viewers but fell to a distant third-place showing among 18-to-49-year-olds behind ABC's league-leading Shark Tank and Fox's runner-up Touch.
NBC whiffed with its entire Friday prime-time lineup, particularly the 7 p.m. Season 2 premiere of Fashion Star. It lagged well back in fourth place, with a threadbare 48,190 total viewers and just 15,947 in the 18-to-49 range.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. combo of D: The Broadcast and D Living remained in "hashmark" territory (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds.
But Monday March 11th's D: The Broadcast showed signs of life -- booking-wise at least -- by landing Linda Gray of Dallas as a guest. WFAA8's competing local hour, Good Morning Texas, offered "Time Saver Tips" and a purse segment during the time Gray chatted amiably with the D show's four co-hosts.
In Friday's local news derby results, CBS11 topped the 10 p.m. field in total viewers while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 as usual swept the 6 a.m. competitions, added a 6 p.m. win in the 25-to-54 demographic and tied WFAA8 for the 5 p.m. gold in that measurement.
CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m. WFAA8 and CBS11 tied for the 5 p.m. lead in total viewers.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., March 7) -- Big Bang belts Idol
03/08/13 10:22 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
American Idol's first live viewer vote-off of the season fell hard to CBS' new episode of The Big Bang Theory in Thursday's prime-time Nielsen numbers.
The first half-hour of Fox's longtime titan drew 316,673 D-FW viewers compared to Big Bang's 426,820. Idol then edged CBS' Two and a Half Men from 7:30 to 8 p.m. before the special 90-minute edition was beaten anew by the first half-hour of CBS' Person of Interest.
Both Big Bang and Two and a Half outdrew Idol among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. Idol's final half-hour then beat Person's opening 30 minutes in this key demographic.
Idol's 10 finalists do not include Cortez Shaw of Dallas, who was left sitting backstage with four other rejected, dejected male singers. The lone Texan still in the mix is Amber Holcomb, 18, of Houston.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. menu of D: The Broadcast and D Living again registered "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and their target audience of 18-to-49-year-olds. TV far more often is a heartbreaker than a dream maker. Still, both shows are only in their third weeks under the D banner.
In Thursday's local news derby results, CBS11 had the most viewers at 10 p.m. while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 remained mighty at 6 a.m. with twin wins. The station also notched a 6 p.m. first among 25-to-54-year-olds and tied NBC5 for the top spot in that measurement at 5 p.m.
The total viewer wins at 5 and 6 p.m. respectively went to NBC5 and CBS11.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
American Idol's first live viewer vote-off of the season fell hard to CBS' new episode of The Big Bang Theory in Thursday's prime-time Nielsen numbers.
The first half-hour of Fox's longtime titan drew 316,673 D-FW viewers compared to Big Bang's 426,820. Idol then edged CBS' Two and a Half Men from 7:30 to 8 p.m. before the special 90-minute edition was beaten anew by the first half-hour of CBS' Person of Interest.
Both Big Bang and Two and a Half outdrew Idol among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. Idol's final half-hour then beat Person's opening 30 minutes in this key demographic.
Idol's 10 finalists do not include Cortez Shaw of Dallas, who was left sitting backstage with four other rejected, dejected male singers. The lone Texan still in the mix is Amber Holcomb, 18, of Houston.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D magazine's 9 to 11 a.m. menu of D: The Broadcast and D Living again registered "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and their target audience of 18-to-49-year-olds. TV far more often is a heartbreaker than a dream maker. Still, both shows are only in their third weeks under the D banner.
In Thursday's local news derby results, CBS11 had the most viewers at 10 p.m. while Fox4 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 remained mighty at 6 a.m. with twin wins. The station also notched a 6 p.m. first among 25-to-54-year-olds and tied NBC5 for the top spot in that measurement at 5 p.m.
The total viewer wins at 5 and 6 p.m. respectively went to NBC5 and CBS11.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., March 6) -- Idol romps against mostly reruns
03/07/13 11:51 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
It's still good to be American Idol, particularly when your competition takes a nap with reruns while you're live for a two-hour chunk of prime-time.
Fox's longtime strongman no doubt is getting gradually weaker. But it still flexed Wednesday night against NBC's do-overs and mixes of new and first-run attractions on ABC and CBS.
Idol's live sing-off among its 10 remaining male contestants (including Cortez Shaw of Dallas) amassed 378,631 D-FW viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot. The next closest contender, CBS' 8 p.m. Criminal Minds reprise, had 178,989 viewers.
The race for advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds was also a rout, with Idol drawing 153,091 of 'em. That's not a particularly impressive percentage, but still loomed large over CBS' runner-up new episode of Survivor: Caramoan, which had 54,220 viewers in this key demographic.
Fox4's Idol-aided 9 p.m. local newscast likewise delivered two knockout punches, ruling with 199,642 total viewers and 63,788 in the 18-to-49 age range.
In the have-not division, KTXD-TV's (Ch. 47) D: The Broadcast and D Living had "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) from 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesday in both the total viewer and 18-to-49 measurements.
The only KTXD program to show any audience at all in the 18-to-49 demographic was a 7:30 a.m. episode of I Love Lucy, which fared pretty well with 12,758 viewers. That made it a steamroller compared to CW33's comedy-laced 9 p.m. Nightcap newscast and WFAA8's 9 a.m. Good Morning Texas. Both locally produced hours drew just 3,189 viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Here are Wednesday's four-way local news derby numbers.
CBS11 prevailed in total viewers at 10 p.m. while WFAA8 won among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again swept the 6 a.m. competitions and added twin wins at 5 p.m. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m. but Fox4 won comfortably with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
It's still good to be American Idol, particularly when your competition takes a nap with reruns while you're live for a two-hour chunk of prime-time.
Fox's longtime strongman no doubt is getting gradually weaker. But it still flexed Wednesday night against NBC's do-overs and mixes of new and first-run attractions on ABC and CBS.
Idol's live sing-off among its 10 remaining male contestants (including Cortez Shaw of Dallas) amassed 378,631 D-FW viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot. The next closest contender, CBS' 8 p.m. Criminal Minds reprise, had 178,989 viewers.
The race for advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds was also a rout, with Idol drawing 153,091 of 'em. That's not a particularly impressive percentage, but still loomed large over CBS' runner-up new episode of Survivor: Caramoan, which had 54,220 viewers in this key demographic.
Fox4's Idol-aided 9 p.m. local newscast likewise delivered two knockout punches, ruling with 199,642 total viewers and 63,788 in the 18-to-49 age range.
In the have-not division, KTXD-TV's (Ch. 47) D: The Broadcast and D Living had "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) from 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesday in both the total viewer and 18-to-49 measurements.
The only KTXD program to show any audience at all in the 18-to-49 demographic was a 7:30 a.m. episode of I Love Lucy, which fared pretty well with 12,758 viewers. That made it a steamroller compared to CW33's comedy-laced 9 p.m. Nightcap newscast and WFAA8's 9 a.m. Good Morning Texas. Both locally produced hours drew just 3,189 viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Here are Wednesday's four-way local news derby numbers.
CBS11 prevailed in total viewers at 10 p.m. while WFAA8 won among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 again swept the 6 a.m. competitions and added twin wins at 5 p.m. CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m. but Fox4 won comfortably with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Pistol-packin' Suzie again off her feed on D: The Broadcast (for which they should be thankful -- for now)
03/06/13 01:52 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
So did she walk off in a huff, as some viewers perceived? Or was her sudden disappearance from Wednesday's 9 a.m. edition of D: The Broadcast more or less planned that way?
Veteran broadcaster/motivational speaker Suzie Humphreys, basically the resident babysitter and truth-teller on the new KTXD-TV (Ch. 47) program, no doubt had a pointed exchange with co-panelist Pat Smith. A reader of unclebarky.com termed it a "smack down" that left the one-hour live program without Humphreys' presence on the couch during the group sign-off with Smith and fellow regulars Lisa Pineiro and Courtney Kerr.
Your friendly content provider didn't see the show, which basically is airing in a vacuum with little or no audience in its early stages, according to the daily D-FW Nielsen ratings. But Phil Hurley, executive VP and chief operating office of Dallas-based London Broadcasting (which owns KTXD), promptly replied to unclebarky.com when asked what happened.
Here's his version, based on talking to the program staffers who witnessed Humphreys' walkout. During a "Suzie Says So" segment, Humphreys and Smith were somewhat at odds on the question: "If you hate your job and your boss, do you quit without having another job to go to?"
Humphreys said the best option was to quit. Smith said it sometimes might be wiser to find another job beforehand because there are still bills to pay.
"Suzie was upset and left the set during the wide shot cutaway," Hurley said Wednesday via email. "She was leaving the show early because she had a speaking engagement in Amarillo. There were no plans for her to return for the remaining segments, so the departure was planned. But the disagreement wasn't planned, and she was upset."
On the way out of the station's North Dallas studios, Humphreys "declared that it probably makes for good television," Hurley added. "And the producer and general manager agreed. I thought it was pretty interesting and natural. And we hope they continue to give different opinions."
Humphreys, formerly a mainstay on radio personality Ron Chapman's long-dominant morning drive-time show, originally signed on as one of the well-weathered "pundits" on KTXD's The Texas Daily. Aimed at baby-boomers over the age of 50, that show premiered on Oct. 1st in an 8 a.m. weekday slot but since has been moved to 6 p.m.
But when D: The Broadcast launched on Feb. 18th, Humphreys was cast as the show's distaff Andy Rooney. The three trendier women surrounding her each have less mileage on them than one of Humphreys' garter belts. And she hasn't been shy about calling them out if their views and facts seem vacuous or ill-informed to her. That was evident on the very first show.
The traveling Humphreys hasn't yet returned an email asking for her side of what happened. But D magazine's Tim Rogers, who's been beating the drums for D: The Broadcast on the magazine's FrontBurner blog, subsequently filed a mid-afternoon post that included both a phone interview with Humphreys and video of the segment in question. In Rogers' account, her speaking engagement was in Midland, not Amarillo.
"I don't think we both even realized what was happening," Humphreys told him in part. "We were suddenly combative. And not combative like ugly, but Pat was headed in one direction, and I was headed in the other."
Humphreys also said of Smith, "I love this woman. She's a fabulous woman."
(In fairness to Smith, the video shows that Humphreys had a pretty short fuse on this one. Things got a little nasty when Smith said, "Suzie, you're not listening" before Humphreys retorted "Oh, I'm sorry" and then sarcastically invited Smith to do the next "Says So" segment.)
For now, it's all good. Because any further attention directed toward this ratings-starved show, even from this corner, is pretty much welcomed by both the D magazine people and KTXD.
Whether Humphreys' psyche can co-exist with her three co-hosts is still an open-ended question, though. Wednesday's flare-up in the short term may be good for business. And D: The Broadcast, which registered "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in Tuesday's 18-to-49-year-old Nielsen ratings measurement, could certainly stand a little more "controversy" of this sort.
Perhaps Humphreys next can aim a knitting needle in the direction of Smith or one of the others. That might even make TMZ. For now, D: The Broadcast already is a whole lot livelier than WFAA8's infomercial-laden Good Morning Texas. We'll see how it all shakes out.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Fox4 reporter Lynn Kawano's crime scoop: what you didn't hear
03/06/13 11:47 AM
Lynn Kawano/myfoxdfw.com photo
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Dallas-based Fox4, first TV station to report the arrest of a suspected "serial rapist" during Tuesday's newscasts, may not have been as enterprising as viewers were led to believe.
Veteran reporter Lynn Kawano is married to the Dallas police department detective who wrote and signed the search warrant affidavit in connection with Fernando Munoz, who was jailed over the weekend.
The Dallas Morning News, in its featured front page Metro section story Wednesday, named Kurt Kresta as the head detective in the case and included quotes from his affidavit. Kresta is married to Kawano, and they had a daughter in March of 2009, according to a birth announcement in The Shield, a Dallas Police Association publication.
Kawano, in her live report on Tuesday's 5 p.m. Fox4 newscast, displayed the multi-page affidavit and quoted from it without disclosing her husband as the author. "And the officer said he believes Munoz to be a flight risk," she told anchor Clarice Tinsley during the report.
Tinsley, who likewise made no mention of the Kawano-Kresta connection, praised Kawano at the end of the report. "Good coverage, Lynn, on getting that information," Tinsley said. Nightside Fox4 reporter Calvert Collins picked up the story for the station's 9 and 10 p.m. newscasts Tuesday.
Kawano and Fox4 news director Robin Whitmeyer have not returned emails requesting comment on whether the station had an ethical lapse in quoting from the affidavit but not identifying the detective who wrote it as Kawano's husband.
The overall intent here is not to discredit Kawano's abilities as a reporter. The facts of her story seem solid, and later were picked up by other electronic news outlets. But how she got her information merited at least a mention in Fox4's coverage. Instead the station trumpeted its "breaking news" and left viewers none the wiser.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., March 5) -- Idol & NCISers trade punches
03/06/13 10:58 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
CBS and Fox ruled prime-time's ratings roosts Tuesday while NBC again barely showed up.
New episodes of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles won from 7 to 9 p.m. in total D-FW viewers with respective hauls of 502,547 and 406,168. American Idol's first live performance show, specially scheduled on a usual off-night, ran a rather distant second in those hours with 337,326 viewers.
CBS' second episode of Golden Boy, which now will move to Fridays at 8 p.m., held on to win the 9 p.m. hour with 247,831 viewers. Fox4's local newscast and ABC's Body of Proof tied for second with 213,410 viewers while a new hour of NBC's Smash drew just 61,958.
Idol and Fox4's local 9 p.m. newscast turned the tables among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, sweeping the night with totals of 159,470 and 79,735. Golden Boy dropped to third, beating only Smash.
NBC ran fourth throughout the night in total viewers, but ABC's second episode of Celebrity Wife Swap also took a big dive from its opening numbers. It had 103,263 viewers at 7 p.m., compared to 234,063 last Tuesday. Competing with Idol will do that to you.
The Peacock's best performer, 7 to 8 p.m. episodes of Betty White's Off Their Rockers, managed a third place finish in that slot among 18-to-49-year-olds.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the 9 to 11 a.m. episodes of D magazine's D: The Broadcast and D Living had "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in the two shows' target 18-to-49 demographic. In the total viewers measurement, D: The Broadcast showed a slight pulse with an overall audience of 6,884 while D Living stuck with hashmarks.
Here are Tuesday's local news derby results:
WFAA8 swept the 10 p.m. competitions with wins in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 ran the table at 6 a.m. and WFAA8 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.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
CBS and Fox ruled prime-time's ratings roosts Tuesday while NBC again barely showed up.
New episodes of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles won from 7 to 9 p.m. in total D-FW viewers with respective hauls of 502,547 and 406,168. American Idol's first live performance show, specially scheduled on a usual off-night, ran a rather distant second in those hours with 337,326 viewers.
CBS' second episode of Golden Boy, which now will move to Fridays at 8 p.m., held on to win the 9 p.m. hour with 247,831 viewers. Fox4's local newscast and ABC's Body of Proof tied for second with 213,410 viewers while a new hour of NBC's Smash drew just 61,958.
Idol and Fox4's local 9 p.m. newscast turned the tables among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, sweeping the night with totals of 159,470 and 79,735. Golden Boy dropped to third, beating only Smash.
NBC ran fourth throughout the night in total viewers, but ABC's second episode of Celebrity Wife Swap also took a big dive from its opening numbers. It had 103,263 viewers at 7 p.m., compared to 234,063 last Tuesday. Competing with Idol will do that to you.
The Peacock's best performer, 7 to 8 p.m. episodes of Betty White's Off Their Rockers, managed a third place finish in that slot among 18-to-49-year-olds.
On KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), the 9 to 11 a.m. episodes of D magazine's D: The Broadcast and D Living had "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in the two shows' target 18-to-49 demographic. In the total viewers measurement, D: The Broadcast showed a slight pulse with an overall audience of 6,884 while D Living stuck with hashmarks.
Here are Tuesday's local news derby results:
WFAA8 swept the 10 p.m. competitions with wins in total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.
Fox4 ran the table at 6 a.m. and WFAA8 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.
unclebarky@verizon.net
An old-line KTVT in blooper mode, with anchor Midge Hill hanging in
03/05/13 02:49 PM
Midge Hill, currently one of the recurring "pundits" on KTXD-TV's (Ch. 47) The Texas Daily, previously had anchoring careers at both WFAA8 and KTVT-TV (Ch. 11) before it was bought by CBS and re-christened CBS11.
At the latter station in the 1990s, she regularly co-anchored with Mike Hambrick. But Hill clearly is the star of the below blooper reel. None of the gaffes are her fault, but some of her reactions are priceless. So enjoy this mini-festival of false starts, pregnant pauses, audio problems and weathercaster Bob Goosmann visually vaporized by a red hot backdrop.
Ed Bark
@unclebarkycom
At the latter station in the 1990s, she regularly co-anchored with Mike Hambrick. But Hill clearly is the star of the below blooper reel. None of the gaffes are her fault, but some of her reactions are priceless. So enjoy this mini-festival of false starts, pregnant pauses, audio problems and weathercaster Bob Goosmann visually vaporized by a red hot backdrop.
Ed Bark
@unclebarkycom
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., March 4) -- last call for J.R. Ewing
03/05/13 11:19 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing went out with a bang -- but not in the D-FW Nielsens -- on his final episode of Dallas Monday night.
He was on the phone from Abu Dhabi, consummating another devious scheme with his son John Ross -- when two shots rang out. So it'll be "Who Shot J.R.?" the sequel. Only this time the late Hagman's signature character won't survive. J.R.'s funeral is set for the March 11th episode of Dallas.
Monday's 8 p.m. hour of Dallas drew 172,105 viewers in D-FW, with 70,167 in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49 age range. That ranked it behind three competing programs.
Fox's The Following, renewed for a second season Monday, led the way with 261,600 total viewers while the second hour of NBC's The Biggest Loser had the most 18-to-49-year-olds (118,008).
ABC's second half of The Bachelor ranked second in both total viewers (220,029) and 18-to-49-year-olds (98,871). The bronzes in the 8 p.m. hour went to Biggest Loser in total viewers (206,526) and The Following with 18-to-49-year-olds (76,546).
Dallas did, however, beat CBS' 8 to 9 p.m. repeats of 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly in both ratings measurements.
Monday's 9 p.m. wins went to Fox4's local newscast, which had 192,758 total viewers and a very impressive 105,250 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Over on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), D: The Broadcast perked up some in the 9 a.m. hour with 8,261 total viewers and 4,146 in the 18-to-49 age range. The latter number, although small, was easily good enough to beat WFAA8's competing Good Morning Texas. It barely registered with 638 viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic. That's pretty astonishing.
At 10 a.m., D Magazine's other new production, the retitled D Living, also supposedly had 4,146 viewers in the 18-to-49 range. But its total audience was just 4,131 viewers, says Nielsen. Both figures obviously can't be correct, so something's amiss.
Meanwhile, CW33's comedy-infused 9 p.m. Nightcap news went virtually unwatched Monday, with 3,442 total viewers and "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in the 18-to-49 demographic. That's disastrous.
Fox4 had a big day in the four-way local news derbies, winning at 6 a.m. and at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The station added 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. wins in total viewers.
CBS11 had the most total viewers at 6 p.m. and WFAA8 ran first in that measurement at 10 p.m.
unclebarky@verizon.net
NBC5 hires Pat Doney as Matt Barrie's weekend sports anchor replacement (updated)
03/04/13 02:46 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Matt Barrie's last day as NBC5's weekend sports anchor was Sunday, and the station already has his replacement inked.
He's Pat Doney of Fox affiliate WDRB-TV in Louisville, who joined that station in July 2010.
"Excited to announce I'll be the new weekend sports anchor at NBCDFW," Doney tweeted Monday afternoon. "My wife and I are sad to leave Lville, but excited about what's ahead."
As previously posted, Barrie is joining ESPN after a five-year stay with Fort Worth-based NBC5. Doney is a graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, and started his broadcasting career in 2007 as a sports intern at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, according to his WDRB bio.
He also has worked at stations in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Fayetville, Arkansas.
NBC5 hasn't officially announced Doney's hiring yet, but it's now fairly common for incoming personnel to break the news on their Twitter pages. Station spokesman Brian Hocker said Doney tentatively will start at NBC5 on April 22nd. His last day at WDRB is April 12th, Doney said via Twitter.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 1-3) -- Ups, downs for Red Widow while Walking Dead beats all
03/04/13 10:35 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
ABC's two-hour Sunday premiere of Red Widow fared fairly well in the total viewer Nielsens but fell victim to Donald Trump's All-Star Celebrity Apprentice in the key 18-to-49 demographic.
But neither show could match AMC's 8 p.m. episode of The Walking Dead, which had 227,179 D-FW viewers with 159,470 in the 18-to-49 age range.
Red Widow averaged 199,642 total viewers from 8 to 10 p.m., easily enough to beat the latest season debut of Celebrity Apprentice (103,263). But Trump turned the tables with 18-to-49-year-olds by a score of 54,220 to 35,083.
Red Widow also was beaten in the 18-to-49 measurement by CBS' 8 p.m. episode of The Good Wife and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast. And it fell sharply from the 70,167 viewers bequeathed by ABC's Once Upon A Time.
D-FW ratings for History (Channel's) twin Sunday night debuts of The Bible and Vikings were not immediately available.
In Friday's prime-time numbers, ABC's new 8 p.m. episode of Shark Tank led all programs in both total viewers (199,642) and 18-to-49-year-olds (95,682). It helped that CBS threw in two repeats of Blue Bloods. Still, Shark Tank is a growing success story for a network that kept the faith and nurtured it into a substantial demographic hit.
In Friday's morning hours, D Magazine's FrontBurner blog post about "ratings gold" for its two new programs hit a wall with the latest daily numbers.
(As previously posted, Thursday's 9 to 11 a.m. editions of D: The Broadcast and D Living on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47) turned in uncommonly solid performances n the key 18-to-49 demographic. But D publisher Wick Allison failed to mention -- and still hasn't -- that Fox4, NBC5, WFAA8 and CBS11 all devoted a substantial portion of those hours to live coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's farewell. In Baptist-dominated D-FW, that turned out to be ratings poison on a day when ABC's usually dominant The View was in large part pre-empted.
KTXD's 8 a.m. rerun of Daniel Boone also had an unprecedented number of 18-to-49-year-old viewers Thursday, raising speculation that Nielsen might have had a screw loose somewhere.)
Anyway, Friday's 10 a.m. hour of D Living reverted to "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. D: The Broadcast did a bit better at 9 a.m. with 2,754 total viewers and 1,594 in the 18-to-49 range.
For comparison's sake, The View topped the 10 a.m. ratings with 75,726 total viewers and 22,326 in the 18-to-49 demographic. At 9 a.m., NBC's Today led in total viewers (82,610) while Today and Fox4's syndicated Kelly & Michael tied for the most 18-to-49-year-olds with 22,326 each.
None of this is earthshaking ratings news. But D, in concert with KTXD head man Phil Hurley, clearly misled its FrontBurner blog readers last week. So this is a corrective measure. Both D: The Broadcast and D Living may yet prove to be success stories down the road. And if that happens, you'll also get that information in these spaces.
Finally, here are Friday's local news derby results:
After a miserable February "sweeps" ratings performance, NBC5 had some bright spots. The Peacock won at 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. in total viewers while also running first at 10 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).
CBS11 had the most total viewers at 10 p.m. and Fox4 remained unbeaten for this entire year in the 6 a.m. competition for 25-to-54-year-olds.
WFAA8 won at 5 p.m. in the 25-to-54 demographic. The 6 p.m. spoils were split between WFAA8 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
ABC's two-hour Sunday premiere of Red Widow fared fairly well in the total viewer Nielsens but fell victim to Donald Trump's All-Star Celebrity Apprentice in the key 18-to-49 demographic.
But neither show could match AMC's 8 p.m. episode of The Walking Dead, which had 227,179 D-FW viewers with 159,470 in the 18-to-49 age range.
Red Widow averaged 199,642 total viewers from 8 to 10 p.m., easily enough to beat the latest season debut of Celebrity Apprentice (103,263). But Trump turned the tables with 18-to-49-year-olds by a score of 54,220 to 35,083.
Red Widow also was beaten in the 18-to-49 measurement by CBS' 8 p.m. episode of The Good Wife and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast. And it fell sharply from the 70,167 viewers bequeathed by ABC's Once Upon A Time.
D-FW ratings for History (Channel's) twin Sunday night debuts of The Bible and Vikings were not immediately available.
In Friday's prime-time numbers, ABC's new 8 p.m. episode of Shark Tank led all programs in both total viewers (199,642) and 18-to-49-year-olds (95,682). It helped that CBS threw in two repeats of Blue Bloods. Still, Shark Tank is a growing success story for a network that kept the faith and nurtured it into a substantial demographic hit.
In Friday's morning hours, D Magazine's FrontBurner blog post about "ratings gold" for its two new programs hit a wall with the latest daily numbers.
(As previously posted, Thursday's 9 to 11 a.m. editions of D: The Broadcast and D Living on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47) turned in uncommonly solid performances n the key 18-to-49 demographic. But D publisher Wick Allison failed to mention -- and still hasn't -- that Fox4, NBC5, WFAA8 and CBS11 all devoted a substantial portion of those hours to live coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's farewell. In Baptist-dominated D-FW, that turned out to be ratings poison on a day when ABC's usually dominant The View was in large part pre-empted.
KTXD's 8 a.m. rerun of Daniel Boone also had an unprecedented number of 18-to-49-year-old viewers Thursday, raising speculation that Nielsen might have had a screw loose somewhere.)
Anyway, Friday's 10 a.m. hour of D Living reverted to "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. D: The Broadcast did a bit better at 9 a.m. with 2,754 total viewers and 1,594 in the 18-to-49 range.
For comparison's sake, The View topped the 10 a.m. ratings with 75,726 total viewers and 22,326 in the 18-to-49 demographic. At 9 a.m., NBC's Today led in total viewers (82,610) while Today and Fox4's syndicated Kelly & Michael tied for the most 18-to-49-year-olds with 22,326 each.
None of this is earthshaking ratings news. But D, in concert with KTXD head man Phil Hurley, clearly misled its FrontBurner blog readers last week. So this is a corrective measure. Both D: The Broadcast and D Living may yet prove to be success stories down the road. And if that happens, you'll also get that information in these spaces.
Finally, here are Friday's local news derby results:
After a miserable February "sweeps" ratings performance, NBC5 had some bright spots. The Peacock won at 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. in total viewers while also running first at 10 p.m. with 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).
CBS11 had the most total viewers at 10 p.m. and Fox4 remained unbeaten for this entire year in the 6 a.m. competition for 25-to-54-year-olds.
WFAA8 won at 5 p.m. in the 25-to-54 demographic. The 6 p.m. spoils were split between WFAA8 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Tammy Dombeck on the roads again with CBS11 debut
03/04/13 09:06 AM
By ED BARK
Former NBC5 "Gridlock Buster" Tammy Dombeck officially returned to a driver's seat Monday on CBS11's early morning news program.
"My first day to fill in. I'm nervous," she said at the start of her first traffic report in the 4:30 a.m. segment. Dombeck then smoothly navigated the pre-dawn highways and byways in the station's "Timesaver Traffic" pog. Meteorologist Garry Seith later called her "Tommy" in the 5 a.m. hour, but that was easy to laugh off.
As first reported in late January on unclebarky.com, Dombeck will be filling in at CBS11 when the occasion demands. Her Monday debut required a double shift, with regular traffic reporter Whitney Drolen moving over to co-anchor with Brendan Higgins while his full-time desk mate, Adrienne Bankert, went on vacation. When she returns, Drolen will take some time off. Dombeck's first tour of fill-in duty at CBS11 is scheduled to last two weeks.
After 12 years with NBC5, Dombeck signed off on July 27th of last year after reaching an impasse on a new contract. One of the principal sticking points was new owner Comcast's refusal to re-install an existing wardrobe allowance. A standard non-compete clause enforced by NBC5 then kept Dombeck off the air in the D-FW market for the next six months.
CBS11's early morning show made significant year-to-year rating gains during the just-concluded February ratings "sweeps," but remains in fourth place in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. The station now has two former NBC5 early morning mainstays on its team. Higgins and Dombeck worked together for eight and a half years at the Peacock.
D-FW Television News Note: Wendy Corona, who recently worked as a freelancer at WFAA8, has left the market to join Atlanta-based WSB-TV as a weekend anchor. She started this past weekend, Corona tweeted throughout the weekend. Former WFAA8 early morning co-anchor Justin Farmer also is with WSB, where his father, Don Farmer, was once a household name.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Tall tale? D Magazine's "D TV Strikes Ratings Gold" headline has more than a little tarnish on it
03/03/13 10:46 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Wick Allison, the man who comfortably presides Caesar-like over D-FW's D magazine empire, got pretty excited Friday in a FrontBurner blog post headlined "D TV Strikes Ratings Gold After Only Eight Days."
He referred to D Living ranking No. 1 in its 10 a.m. slot Thursday among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, "beating out The View at #2," in his words.
Allison also crowed about the magazine's other newcomer, D: The Broadcast (pictured above), running second at 9 a.m. in this key demographic to "ugh -- Jerry Springer," as he put it. Both shows premiered on Monday, Feb.18th on KTXD-TV (Ch. 47), which otherwise carries a baby boomer-targeted lineup of evergreen reruns and The Texas Daily.
"It's only one day," Allison wrote. "But to quote our partner, London Broadcasting's Phil Hurley, 'This just doesn't happen in this business.' "
But things happen for a reason. And a big reason Thursday morning was live network coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's farewell, which affected substantial portions of the 9 to 11 a.m. schedules on Fox4, NBC5, WFAA8 and CBS11. In a Baptist-rich area like this, the Pope isn't exactly a ratings magnet. So the switch supposedly was on -- to a station not carrying him.
For the record, here are the official times, provided by networks and local stations, of how much coverage was devoted to the Pope.
***ABC News and local affiliate WFAA8 carried Pope coverage from 9:53 to 10:41 a.m. Thursday. That pretty much punched out The View, which airs from 10 to 11 a.m.
***NBC carried had the Pope from 9:53 to 10:45 a.m., knocking the light and fluffy stuffing out of the Today show during that period.
***CBS went with the Pope from 9:44 to 10:29 a.m., obliterating chunks of both Let's Make A Deal and The Price Is Right.
***Fox4, which has syndicated programming from 9 to 11 a.m., carried a Fox News feed of the Pope's farewell from 10:02 to 10:09 a.m. and again from 10:23 to 10:42 a.m. That left Kelly & Michael intact but made a mess of a 10 a.m. Wendy Williams repeat.
Before getting specific times from all four major broadcast networks, I left a comment on Allison's FrontBurner post alerting him that his D shows were in part competing with the Pope, not The View, etc. He replied, "If you're saying we beat the Pope, I'm even prouder. (Forgive me, Father . . .)"
Even so, a lot of people are scratching their heads at Thursday's Nielsen ratings. Largely because D: The Broadcast and D Living both averaged "hashmarks" (no measurable audience) for their first eight shows in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. That held true on Wednesday of this week as well -- wall-to-wall hashmarks for both shows in both ratings measurements.
On Thursday, though, D: The Broadcast suddenly spring-boarded to 33,733 total viewers, with a very nice percentage of 20,732 in the 18-to-49 range. And D Living likewise drew 33,733 total viewers and exactly the same number of 18-to-49-year-olds.
For comparison purposes, Wednesday's edition of The View had a timeslot-winning 38,911 viewers in the 18-to-49 demographic; Thursday's edition, all but rubbed out by the Pope, drew just 16,904 viewers in the 18-to-49 age range.
Here's what's really odd, though. And something Allison didn't mention in his FrontBurner post. KTXD's 8 a.m. Thursday repeat of Daniel Boone (1964-70 on NBC) had 37,175 total viewers as a lead-in to D: The Broadcast. Even more astoundingly, 17,861 of them were 18-to-49-year-olds. But Wednesday's Daniel Boone episode had just 5,507 total viewers, with none of them in the 18-to-49 range, according to Nielsen.
A big posse of 18-to-49-year-olds suddenly watching Daniel Boone? As even Dan'l himself would say, "Somethin' doesn't smell right, and it ain't that dead possum I forgot to skin for dinner."
Whatever happened Thursday had a Pope Benedict flavor to it, at least in terms of the two D TV shows. But that day's greatly inflated numbers for Daniel Boone also make one wonder if Nielsen somehow had a pretty big ratings malfunction Thursday morning.
If the numbers for D: The Broadcast and D Living continue to surge -- or even stay anywhere near where Thursday's were -- then KTXD's Hurley and D's Allison might actually be aboard a gravy train someday. For now, Allison says that both parties are engaged in a daring "experiment in exercising the power of the D-branded print and online channels to launch us in a new medium."
"It is a credit to Phil Hurley's vision," Allison also wrote, "that he believed the D brand could break through to grab the attention of Dallas viewers."
Hurley probably would like to hang me from the highest tree at this point. And Allison won't be inviting your friendly content provider to any mixers or slumber parties. But this is the story behind and beyond the "D TV Strikes Ratings Gold" headline. And now you know.
unclebarky@verizon.net
Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed.-Thurs., Feb. 27-28) -- Idol doubles its dominance
03/03/13 10:46 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Fox's American Idol tuned out the competition Wednesday and Thursday, rolling to four hours worth of wins in both total viewers and advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
Thursday's cause was aided by a 7 to 9 p.m. CBS lineup of repeats, including the always potent Big Bang Theory. But that's not Fox's fault, and it's one of the reasons why Idol is still a major cash cow for the network even as ratings slip from season to season.
Wednesday's two hours, airing on the last night of the February "sweeps" ratings period, averaged 371,747 total viewers, with 178,604 of them 18-to-49-year-olds. The Thursday edition drew 351,094 viewers, with 153,091 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Three Texans are among Idol's 20 semi-finalists, including 22-year-old Cortez Shaw of Dallas. The others are Vincent Powell, 29, of Austin, and Amber Holcomb, 18, of Houston. Live performances begin on Tuesday of next week, with Thursday's live viewer voting results trimming the field all the way down to 10.
In the 9 p.m. hour Wednesday, CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation won in total viewers while NBC's Chicago Fire had the most 18-to-49-year-olds. On Thursday, the respective winners in those two measurements were CBS' Elementary and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast.
ABC removed Zero Hour from its lineup after Thursday's third episode in the 7 p.m. hour performed particularly poorly with 18-to-49-year-olds. Shark Tank repeats will fill in on the next two Thursdays.
Here are the local news derby results:
Wednesday -- WFAA8 and CBS11 tied for first at 10 p.m. in total viewers, with WFAA8 winning among 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).
Fox4 again ran the table at 6 a.m. The 6 p.m. golds went to WFAA8 in total viewers, with a tie in the 25-to-54 demographic between WFAA8 and Fox4. WFAA8 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m., but Fox4 dominated among 25-to-54-year-olds.
Thursday -- CBS11 won in total viewers at 10 p.m., with Fox4 finishing first with 25-to-54-year-olds.
Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions while tying NBC5 for the top spot in total viewers at 5 p.m. and winning outright in the 25-to-54 measurement.
The 6 p.m. golds went to CBS11 in total viewers and WFAA8 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net
@unclebarkycom
Fox's American Idol tuned out the competition Wednesday and Thursday, rolling to four hours worth of wins in both total viewers and advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds.
Thursday's cause was aided by a 7 to 9 p.m. CBS lineup of repeats, including the always potent Big Bang Theory. But that's not Fox's fault, and it's one of the reasons why Idol is still a major cash cow for the network even as ratings slip from season to season.
Wednesday's two hours, airing on the last night of the February "sweeps" ratings period, averaged 371,747 total viewers, with 178,604 of them 18-to-49-year-olds. The Thursday edition drew 351,094 viewers, with 153,091 in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Three Texans are among Idol's 20 semi-finalists, including 22-year-old Cortez Shaw of Dallas. The others are Vincent Powell, 29, of Austin, and Amber Holcomb, 18, of Houston. Live performances begin on Tuesday of next week, with Thursday's live viewer voting results trimming the field all the way down to 10.
In the 9 p.m. hour Wednesday, CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation won in total viewers while NBC's Chicago Fire had the most 18-to-49-year-olds. On Thursday, the respective winners in those two measurements were CBS' Elementary and Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast.
ABC removed Zero Hour from its lineup after Thursday's third episode in the 7 p.m. hour performed particularly poorly with 18-to-49-year-olds. Shark Tank repeats will fill in on the next two Thursdays.
Here are the local news derby results:
Wednesday -- WFAA8 and CBS11 tied for first at 10 p.m. in total viewers, with WFAA8 winning among 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).
Fox4 again ran the table at 6 a.m. The 6 p.m. golds went to WFAA8 in total viewers, with a tie in the 25-to-54 demographic between WFAA8 and Fox4. WFAA8 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m., but Fox4 dominated among 25-to-54-year-olds.
Thursday -- CBS11 won in total viewers at 10 p.m., with Fox4 finishing first with 25-to-54-year-olds.
Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions while tying NBC5 for the top spot in total viewers at 5 p.m. and winning outright in the 25-to-54 measurement.
The 6 p.m. golds went to CBS11 in total viewers and WFAA8 with 25-to-54-year-olds.
unclebarky@verizon.net