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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Tues. Jan. 15)

By ED BARK
The two-hour, seventh season premiere of American Idol predictably tore through the prime-time ratings Tuesday night, boosting Fox4's 9 p.m. local newscast to rarefied heights as well.

Idol amassed 453,022 D-FW homes in virtually replicating the performance of Fox's Sunday night premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

But Terminator followed a mega-audience of more than one million homes for the Cowboys-Giants playoff game while Idol comparatively had to build from scratch off a lead-in from the syndicated Access Hollywood (121,780 homes).

Idol also grabbed 372,101 viewers in the advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-old demographic. That's more than triple the number of all prime-time programs except CBS' Comanche Moon miniseries, which managed to corral 138,750 viewers in that audience group.

Fox4's 9 p.m. news also won its time slot among 18-to-49-year-olds. And its 272,787 total homes fell just shy of the second hour of Comanche Moon (278,267 homes), which drew a largely older audience.

All in all, Comanche Moon performed very well, pulling a double-digit Nielsen rating in total homes even opposite Idol. (Each rating point equals 24,356 D-FW homes.)

Fox4's 10 p.m. newscast then fell to fourth place in total homes and with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming. CBS11 took the gold in both late night news measurements, each time nipping runnerup Belo8.

The 6 a.m. Nielsens again put Fox4 on top in both measurements, with Belo8 a competitive second. The 7 to 9 a.m. portion of Fox4's Good Day then beat the three network morning shows across the board for the second straight weekday.

Belo8 remained in control of the 5 and 6 p.m. newscast ratings, running the table at both hours.