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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 25-27) -- NCAA hoops dominate Saturday, Walking Dead, Little Big Shots again liven Sunday

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
The latest season of AMC’s The Walking Dead has just one episode to go. Sunday’s penultimate hour set the table with another big ratings splash while NBC’s Little Big Shots also went boom.

Airing in the 7 p.m. hour, Big Shots drew 318,708 D-FW viewers to edge Walking Dead’s 304,543 from 8 to 9 p.m. An eye-popping 184,191 of Dead’s viewers were in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old age range. No show, sports or otherwise, draws a better percentage of viewers in this key demographic. In contrast, Big Shots had 82,568 viewers in the 18-to-49 realm, still good enough to finish second for the night.

On TBS, underdog Syracuse’s big second half comeback against Virginia in the NCAA basketball tourney averaged 162,895 total viewers before North Carolina’s decisive win over Notre Dame drew 184,142. Unlike Walking Dead, both games drew well less than half their viewers from the 18-to-49 pool.

Fox’s prime-time reprise of Grease Live! hit bottom with just 56,659 total viewers and 9,527 in the 18-to-49 motherlode.

CBS had Saturday’s NCAA tournament pairings, with both games easily winning their time slots in both ratings measurements. The first matchup, with Oklahoma dominating Oregon, averaged 191,225 total viewers before Villanova’s narrow win over Kansas had 240,802. That makes a Final Four of North Carolina (the only remaining No. 1 seed), Syracuse, Oklahoma and Villanova. All of those games will be on TBS.

ABC’s annual Easter season presentation of The Ten Commandments fell short of the ratings promised land but did rank an overall second in its time slot Saturday night with 134,566 total viewers. But Moses vs. the Egyptians lured just 19,054 viewers in the sainted 18-to-49 age range. That put it behind basketball for the entire night and NBC’s Dateline from 7 to 9 p.m. And so it is written. And so it shall be told.

On Friday night, Fox4’s 9 p.m. local newscast ranked as the single biggest draw in total viewers while CBS’ Syracuse-Gonzaga game had the most 18-to-49-year-olds.

Here are Friday’s local news derby results, with CBS11’s 6 and 10 p.m. editions again giving way to basketball.

TEGNA8 had the most total viewers at 10 p.m., but Fox4 reigned among 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

Fox4 swept both the 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. competitions. The 6 p.m. golds went to Fox4 in total viewers and NBC5 in the 25-to-54 demographic.

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net