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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., Dec. 2-4) -- Cowboys' desert debacle draws biggest crowd since season opener

By ED BARK
Late afternoon games generally do better and it was a cold, rainy day to boot. So the Dallas Cowboys prospered on Fox Sunday during a game that will long be remembered as the one where head coach Jason Garrett shot the team in the foot by "icing" his own kicker.

Let's spare any more details of the Cowboys' thereby snatching defeat from victory, with the Arizona Cardinals prancing to a stunning 19-13 overtime win. The game averaged 1,544,495 D-FW viewers, with a high of 1,788,362 between 6 and 6:15 p.m. for a game that stretched to 6:22.

Only NBC's Sunday Night Football opener between Dallas and the Jets has drawn a bigger overall crowd to date. It averaged 1,634,465 viewers.

Fox's earlier Houston Texans-Atlanta Falcons game drew a nice-sized 541,928 viewers, more than NBC had for its prime-time matchup between the New Orleans Saints and Detroit Lions (447,091 viewers).

Among Sunday's non-sports offerings, CBS11 scored highest with a 9 p.m. episode of CSI: Miami (345,479 viewers).

On Saturday night, most of you naughty little boys and girls watched Oklahoma State drub Oklahoma rather than see Uncle Barky's alma mater Wisconsin Badgers win the inaugural Big Ten championship game by barely surviving Michigan State. The double Okie had 352,253 viewers on ABC while Bucky played before a small crowd of 81,289 viewers on Fox.

Baylor's rout of Texas on Saturday afternoon averaged 284,512 viewers on ABC.

Friday's local news derby results went like this: CBS11 edged NBC5 for first place at 10 p.m. in total viewers but the Peacock rebounded with a big win among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Otherwise it was all Fox4, which swept the 6 a.m. and 5 and 6 p.m. competitions.