Dallas Evening, Late News Viewing Flat

Dallas has the distinction of being the one Top 10 market where the evening and late news audience remained flat in May 2014 compared to the same sweeps month a year earlier. Six markets were down, while three were up.

The English-language audiences in Dallas grew at 5 p.m. (+4%), 6 p.m. (+2%) and 9 p.m. (+2%), but sagged at 10 p.m. (-12%), according to a TVNewsCheck analysis of the Nielsen’s count of weekday viewers aged 25 to 54 of evening and late news in the top 10 markets. Meanwhile, the analysis found, the Spanish-language viewership was down at 5 and 10.

In the English-language market, Fox’s KDFW is arguably the news leader. It is No. 1 not only at 9 when its only rival is Tribune’s weak KDAF, but also at 5 and 6 where it also faces NBC’s KXAS, Gannett’s ABC affiliate WFAA and CBS’s KTVT.

WFAA  beat out KDFW for the top spot at 10 p.m., but having lost 23% of its audience its margin is now razor thin.

KXAS made a strong showing. It finished second at 5, inched past WFAA for the second spot at 6 and moved into a virtual tie with KDFW at 10 by growing its audience 45% at that time while everybody else was posting losses.

KTVT continued to struggle. It ranked fourth at 5 and 6 and sank to fourth behind KXAS at 10 as 41% of its audience disappeared.

The rankings in Spanish-language news did not change at either 5 or 10 p.m. Univision’s KUVN was No. 1; Telemundo’s KXTX was a distant second.