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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Wed., April 6) -- Idol, Empire, Fox4 news = prime-time sweep

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Nothing could touch Fox or Fox4 in prime-time Wednesday. The penultimate episode of American Idol, Empire and Fox4’s followup local newscast dominated the competition with the greatest of ease.

Idol led off 389,532 D-FW viewers and 139,731 in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old demographic. (It also marked the end of the road for Sunnyvale’s Dalton Rapattoni, who reached the show’s final three before being voted out.)

Empire upped those numbers to 439,109 total viewers and 219,123 in the 18-to-49 age range.

Fox4’s 9 p.m. news then took it down several notches but still crushed the competing three broadcast network dramas with 304,543 total viewers and 120,677 in the 18-to-49 realm.

The next highest scorer among ABC, CBS and NBC was ABC’s 8 p.m. episode of Modern Family with 226,637 total viewers and 85,744 within the 18-to-49 motherlode.

Over in the cable universe, the Dallas Mavericks won a key, hard fought, down-to-the-wire game with the Houston Rockets to greatly enhance their post-season prospects. ESPN also went against Fox Sports Southwest’s homegrown telecast and won in both ratings measurements. ESPN averaged 84,989 total viewers and 53,987 in the 18-to-49 demographic. FSS had respective totals of 63,742 and 28,581 viewers. That’s a pretty big disparity among 18-to-49-year-olds.

Earlier Wednesday, the Texas Rangers’ afternoon home loss to the Seattle Mariners drew 77,906 total viewers on FSS. Just under one-third of them -- 25,406 -- were in the 18-to-49 age range.

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

Fox4 won at 10 p.m. in both total viewers and 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming). The station as usual also swept the 6 a.m. competitions.

NBC5 took both of the 5 p.m. golds and added a 6 p.m. win with 25-to-54-year-olds. TEGNA8 and CBS11 tied for the most total viewers at 6 p.m.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net