powered by FreeFind

Apple iTunes

Archives

Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Thurs., Sept. 6) -- NBC leads convention ratings parade while Rangers swing for fences

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
The Democrats shut down their three-day convention Thursday while the Texas Rangers played deeper into the night before emerging victorious at Kansas City.

And during the 9 to 10 p.m. picture window, baseball on Fox Sports Southwest outdrew the combined convention audience on ABC, CBS and NBC.

OK, lets touch all these bases.

The Rangers' extra inning win, which stretched to 10:30 p.m., averaged 264,190 D-FW viewers overall. But interest built during the game's latter innings, with the 9 to 10 p.m. portion drawing 291,286 viewers.

President Obama's acceptance speech began at 9:25 p.m. and bled a bit past the 10 p.m. witching hour before ending at 10:04 p.m. Here are the 9 to 10 p.m. convention numbers, during which ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel all had coverage. (NBC, making an attempt at a make-good after Wednesday's NFL football pre-emption, began its convention coverage an hour earlier at 8 p.m.)

NBC -- 155,804 viewers
PBS -- 81,289 viewers
MSNBC -- 74,515 viewers
ABC -- 67,741 viewers
CNN -- 60,967 viewers
CBS/FNC -- 54,193 viewers each

The total seven-network audience of 548,702 viewers fell short of the 602,895 viewers who witnessed Mitt Romney's acceptance speech on the GOP convention's final night last week.

Some other observations:

PBS, whose commentators mostly shut up when speakers were at the podium, made a very strong showing on closing night of the Democratic convention. And it ranked No. 3 in the D-FW ratings on the final night of the Republican convention. Maybe some viewers still prefer impartiality and actual podium speeches?

Fox News Channel went from the penthouse to the outhouse, as did MSNBC. The "Fair and Balanced" network was a runaway first on the Republicans' closing night, amassing 209,997 viewers while Democrat-sympathizing MSNBC ranked next to last with 54,193 viewers.

On closing night of the Democratic convention, FNC tied for last with CBS, losing more than 150,000 viewers from the previous Thursday. MSNBC moved up to third place with 74,515 viewers for Obama's speech. It had more viewers than FNC all week for the Democratic convention while the reverse was true for the Republican gathering.

CBS by far fared the worst among the Big 3 broadcast networks, ranking behind ABC and NBC on both closing nights despite the presence of Texan and former WFAA8/NBC5 reporter Scott Pelley as its principal convention anchor.

CNN also had a rough time, ranking last on the Republicans' closing night and barely outdrawing FNC for the Democrats' finale.

One more thing. MSNBC, led by Rachel Maddow, ridiculed the Republicans for putting Clint Eastwood in the 9 to 10 p.m. prime-time showcase spot while showing Romney's biographical film before ABC, CBS and NBC began their convention coverage. All three commercial broadcast networks obviously would have carried the film, said Maddow. And even she thought it was an effective piece of campaign imagery. Thereby the Republicans really blew it, she said.

Well, on closing night of the Democratic convention, the Obama bio film in fact did air between 9 and 10 p.m. NBC showed it in its entirety, ABC joined it roughly halfway through after a commercial break and CBS completely ignored it in favor of jabber from its convention team. Case closed.

Here are Thursday's local news derby results.

The 10 p.m. newscasts again got a late start, so let's just leave them out of this mix.

NBC5 and WFAA8 tied for first in total viewers at 6 a.m., with the Peacock alone on top among 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

CBS11 finally broke into the winner's circle by finishing first at 6 p.m. in total viewers. But Fox4 won by a comfy margin in the 25-to-54 demographic.

The 5 p.m. wins went to WFAA8 in total viewers and Fox4 with 25-to-54-year-olds.