WLS-TV dominates households in November

ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” was Chicago’s top entertainment (non-sports) program in November. 

November sweeps came and went and as usual, ABC- owned WLS-TV won the 10pm news race, and also dominated the market overall (thank you Oprah and Dancing With The Stars.)

While household numbers were only available (thanks to an unreliable source), look for WLS to dominate in all key news time periods in key demos, including adults 25-54 and adults 18-49.

CBS' WBBM-TV finished second in households at 10, with Rob Johnson and newcomer Kate Sullivan finished second. While the number is down slightly from November 2009, it is still better than what the newscast earned in the last decade or so, when it routinely finished fifth or even sixth.

Coming in third was NBC's WMAQ, which was up --percent in households, but finished behind WGN-TV's newscast at 9 pm. And speaking of 9, WGN easily creamed Fox-owned WFLD's news, which had perhaps the worst showing in the history of the station in the time period with a 1.7 HH rating, barely ahead of WCIU's off-net repeats of The New Adventures of Old Christine and Frasier. If Bob Sirott & Co. can’t outdraw reruns of a laugh-free sitcom with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lead, maybe its time for WFLD to throw in the towel.

Meanwhile, the return of Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson to WBBM's 6 p.m. newscast hasn't done anything to jump start the numbers - ratings are down -- percent in households from last year. Other  notes from November:

- While the Sun-Times’ Lewis Lazare noted NBC's 9 p.m. weeknight slot improved in the ratings locally from failed year-ago occupant The Jay Leno Show, the opposite was true in Milwaukee: Leno actually did better in the slot last year than this year's offerings, according to On Milwaukee.com's Tim Cuprisin. Despite the drop in ratings from a year ago at 9, NBC affiliate WTMJ finished a close second to ABC affiliate WISN in the weeknight 10 p.m. news race.

- While WGN dominated the 9pm news race over WFLD, here's something else surprising: WGN's CW programming actually drew more viewers in households than Fox's weeknight prime-time lineup, at least from 8 to 9 pm, and nearly beat NBC. But you can chalk this up to weak prime time fare on both NBC and Fox in the hour than a surge in popularity for CW programming.