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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues., July 1) -- end of U.S. soccer run no match for Mexico's exit

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Airing on a weekday workday afternoon rather than a Sunday afternoon, the United States’ tense, overtime bow-out to Belgium fell well short of the ratings for Mexico’s World Cup soccer exit versus The Netherlands.

Neither D-FW ratings number takes into account the audiences for watch party or workplace viewings. But the in-home Nielsens still tell quite a story.

Belgium’s 2-1 win over the U.S., running from 3 to 5:32 p.m. Tuesday, averaged 276,951 viewers on ESPN and drew another 156,229 for Univision23’s Spanish language telecast. The grand total of 433,180 viewers is smallish compared to the 703,028 who watched Mexico-Netherlands late Sunday morning and early Sunday afternoon on the two networks. For that match, the bulk of the viewing audience not surprisingly chose Univision23, which by itself had 575,205 viewers.

The United States’ final World Cup match in 2014 also fell short of the combined 546,800 viewers for the team’s Sunday, June 22nd tie with Portugal.

Among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, U.S.-Belgium drew 123,755 viewers on ESPN and 68,391 on Univision23. The total of 192,146 is way behind both Mexico-Netherlands (358,237) and U.S.-Portugal (315,900). It obviously helped that both of those higher-rated matches were on a Sunday rather than a workday.

Still, the disparity in ratings for the U.S. and Mexico exits make it fairly clear that the biggest soccer audiences in D-FW were for Mexico’s team. It seems likely that the local ratings would have continued to tell that story if both teams had advanced to the final eight rather than being knocked out in the round of 16.

Elsewhere Tuesday, NBC’s two-hour edition of America’s Got Talent fell short of the audience for U.S.-Belgium but led all prime-time programming with 312,457 total viewers in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot. AGT also drew the most 18-to-49-year-olds (113,985). Fox4’s local newscast won at 9 p.m. in both ratings measurements.

Here are Tuesday’s local news derby results.

Fox4 and CBS11 tied for the most total viewers at 10 p.m., but NBC5 ran first with 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

The Peacock also rose up for a rare sweep of the 6 a.m. competitions and added a 6 p.m. win in total viewers.

Fox4 ran the table at 5 p.m. and notched another gold at 6 p.m. among 25-to-54-year-olds.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net