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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., Aug. 25) -- another ratings romp for Rangers

By ED BARK
Fox Sports Southwest again savored the fruits of another Texas Rangers home win Wednesday while local news directors perhaps cursed the time it took them to beat the Twins.

Home games regularly bleed into 10 p.m. newscasts, with Wednesday's 4-3 victory running until 10:12 p.m. That tends to wring the juice out of those 10 p.m. news numbers. And that's exactly what the Rangers did, drawing their biggest audience -- 352,888 D-FW viewers -- from 10 to 10:15 p.m. while the most watched newscast (on WFAA8) drew 142,512 viewers during those 15 minutes.

It's enough to make even football-centric WFAA8 sports anchor Dale Hansen lead his segment with the Rangers while simultaneously sticking tongue in cheek to proclaim himself a "Rangers guy." Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys training camp coverage in Oxnard seems almost beside the point, at least during this currently rousing homestand by the first-place Rangers.

Overall, Rangers-Twins averaged 264,666 viewers for a game that also was carried on ESPN2 but blacked out locally.

A new 8 p.m. episode of NBC's potent America's Got Talent had Wednesday's second biggest crowd with 223,948 viewers. And Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast had a reasonably nice night, succumbing to the Rangers but outdrawing all other competing programming in both total viewers and advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds.

In the four-way local news derby results, WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in total viewers while NBC5 prevailed with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming on most stations.

The winning totals were down considerably, though, from the previous night. On Tuesday, when the Rangers game ended before 10 p.m., NBC5 ran the table with 291,811 total viewers and 138,105 in the 25-to-54 age range. WFAA8 won Wednesday's total viewers competition with 156,085, which is fewer than it had Tuesday despite finishing a distant second. NBC5's winning Wednesday night total of 85,932 viewers in the 25-to-54 demographic also fell sharply from Tuesday's showing.

Meanwhile, the 6 a.m. wins were split between NBC5 in total viewers and Fox4 among 25-to-54-year-olds.

WFAA8 swept the 6 p.m. competitions and also placed first at 5 p.m. in total viewers. NBC5 and CBS11 shared the 5 p.m. gold in the 25-to-54 measurement.
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