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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., Oct. 14) -- Rangers' wreckage draws a crowd

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Celebrating Halloween early with a seventh inning horror show, the Texas Rangers bumbled their way out of the post-season Wednesday while also costing D-FW’s Fox4 some big ratings paydays had they made it all the way to the World Series.

The 6-3 Game 5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays aired on FS1 from shortly after 3 p.m. until 6:44 p.m. Ratings built throughout the day and early evening, with a peak crowd of 602,004 D-FW viewers between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m.

The entire game averaged 375,367 viewers to rank second among the five Rangers-Jays face-offs. Only one of the games was in prime-time. And Sunday’s nighttime Game 3 on FS1 easily drew the biggest crowd of 531,180 viewers. Playing Toronto, whose ratings don’t count in the U.S. average, had a lot to do with Major League Baseball’s decision to under-expose the Rangers-Blue Jays series. But most D-FW denizens were better off not seeing Wednesday’s seventh inning, in which Texas made three consecutive infield errors for openers and eventually left a 3-2 lead in the dirt.

The Rangers weren’t Wednesday’s biggest overall ratings draw. That prize again went to Fox’s Empire, which amassed 538,262 viewers in the 8 p.m. hour. More than half of them -- 279,462 -- were in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old demographic.

For the first time, though, Empire couldn’t quite prop up Fox’s lead-in program, Rosewood. It was edged in total viewers -- 198,307 to 191,225 -- by CBS’ competing Survivor. But Rosewood did beat Survivor by a thin margin among 18-to-49-year-olds.

Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast again very much enjoyed Empire’s tailwind. It drew 368,285 total viewers (a huge number for a local newscast) while also breezing to an easy win with 18-to-49-year-olds. How easy? The competing 9 p.m. network programs, CBS’ Code Black, ABC’s Nashville and NBC’s Chicago P.D., had a combined audience of 158,785 viewers in the 18-to-49 motherlode. Fox4’s news drew 170,505.

Here are Wednesday’s four-way local news derby results.

Fox4 kept the Empire night momentum rolling with 10 p.m. wins in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

The station also ran the table at 5 and 6 p.m. But its 6 a.m. news, generally a ratings winner, fell to second place in both ratings measurements behind front-running NBC5.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net