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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Mon., Feb. 3) -- NBC whiffs with Sports Illustrated's curves ball

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
NBC programmers probably figured they couldn’t go wrong with a two-hour special tied to the 50th anniversary of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

Boy, were they wrong. Monday night’s two-hour Sports Illustrated Swimsuit: 50 Years of Beautiful turned out to be one of the bigger ratings duds of the season. Airing from 8 to 10 p.m., it drew a scant 42,608 D-FW viewers to rank a very distant last among all prime-time programming on the Big Four broadcast networks.

50 Years of Beautiful likewise had butt-ugly returns among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, drawing just 13,027 of ‘em. In contrast, the night’s best performer in this key demographic, CBS’ 7 p.m. episode of How I Met Your Mother, had 130,263 viewers.

HIMYM also won its time slot in total viewers with 255,647. CBS likewise ran first from 7:30 to 9 p.m. with its regular comedy lineup of 2 Broke Girls, Mike & Molly and Mom (all with 248,546 viewers). The 9 p.m. winner, ABC’s Castle, ruled with 269,849 viewers.

2 Broke Girls took the 7:30 to 8 p.m. top spot among 18-to-49-year-olds before the second half of ABC’s The Bachelor and Castle took over from 8 to 10 p.m.

In local news derby results on the third weekday of the February “sweeps,” WFAA8 won at 10 p.m. in total viewers while Fox4 drew the most 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

Fox4 remained fully in charge at 6 a.m. by again running the table. NBC5 swept the 6 p.m. competitions and added a 5 p.m. win with 25-to-54-year-olds. WFAA8 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m.

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