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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., June 2) -- Mavs beat Heat and mash all competition but fall short of Game 1 crowd

By ED BARK
The same thing happened with the Western Conference championship series against Oklahoma City. In D-FW the audience for Game 1 was bigger than that for Game 2.

Thursday night's stunning Dallas Mavericks comeback win against the Miami Heat averaged 1,031,929 viewers on ABC, a pretty significant drop from the 1,302,032 who watched Tuesday's opener of the NBA Finals. The number of advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds also fell hard, from Game 1's 697,607 to 559,402. Man, the novelty wears off quick around here.

Ratings peaked in both measurements for the final 15 minutes of Game 2, in which Dallas came all the way back from a 15-point deficit midway through the 4th quarter to stun-gun Miami 95-93. From 10:30 to 10:45 p.m., the game had 1,315,883 total viewers, with 746,966 in the 18-to-49 age range.

Almost everyone stuck around for the 10:45 to 11 p.m. afterglow. Those 15 post-game minutes drew 1,253,552 total viewers, including 730,513 in the 18-to-49 demographic.

The premiere of NBC's Love Bites series, originally announced for the fall and unavailable for review, had a measly 90,034 total viewers at 9 p.m. A decent percentage -- 52,650 -- were 18-to-49-year-olds.

In local news derby results, the 10 p.m. editions on Fox4, NBC5 and CBS11 ran into the teeth of the Mavs game. So the ratings were deflated overall, with CBS11 leading the total viewers pack with 159,291 while also drawing the most 25-to-54-year-olds, main advertiser target audience for news programming.

NBC5 ran first in total viewers at 6 a.m., with Fox4 atop the 25-to-54 heap. The Peacock ran the table at 5 p.m.

The 6 p.m. firsts were split between WFAA8 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.