Tag: ratings low

‘TUF 18? Debut Averages 762,000 Viewers for Smallest Premiere-Audience in Series History


(Okay, new strategy: We just turn this show into an offshoot of Naked and Afraid. / Image via Fox Sports 1)

Blame the new channel. Blame the new night. Blame viewer fatigue from the five hours of UFC fights on FOX Sports 1 that preceeded it. Blame it on the a, a-a-a, a-al, co-hol. Whatever the explanation is, Wednesday’s The Ultimate Fighter 18: Team Rousey vs. Team Tate premiere didn’t exactly blow up the airwaves, averaging 762,000 viewers, the smallest audience for a season premiere in the show’s history. The number is less than half of the 1.51 million viewers who tuned in to episode 1 of TUF 17: Team Jones vs. Team Sonnen, which aired Tuesday nights on FX earlier this year.

The current-record holder for lowest-rated Ultimate Fighter season is TUF 16, which debuted with 947k viewers but went as low as 624k viewers in its fifth episode, and introduced the world to Julian Lane. It seems likely that TUF 18 will sink below TUF 16‘s low-water mark, given the audience drop-off that generally happens after the season premiere. (In a related story, UFC Fight Night 28 brought in just 539,000 viewers on FOX Sports 1 earlier that night — down 35% from the previous week’s Fight Night: Condit vs. Kampmann show in Indianapolis — but I guess that shouldn’t surprise anybody.)

Of course, there’s always a way to spin stories like these, and UFC president Dana White defended the numbers on a UG post last night:


(Okay, new strategy: We just turn this show into an offshoot of Naked and Afraid. / Image via Fox Sports 1)

Blame the new channel. Blame the new night. Blame viewer fatigue from the five hours of UFC fights on FOX Sports 1 that preceeded it. Blame it on the a, a-a-a, a-al, co-hol. Whatever the explanation is, Wednesday’s The Ultimate Fighter 18: Team Rousey vs. Team Tate premiere didn’t exactly blow up the airwaves, averaging 762,000 viewers, the smallest audience for a season premiere in the show’s history. The number is less than half of the 1.51 million viewers who tuned in to episode 1 of TUF 17: Team Jones vs. Team Sonnen, which aired Tuesday nights on FX earlier this year.

The current-record holder for lowest-rated Ultimate Fighter season is TUF 16, which debuted with 947k viewers but went as low as 624k viewers in its fifth episode, and introduced the world to Julian Lane. It seems likely that TUF 18 will sink below TUF 16‘s low-water mark, given the audience drop-off that generally happens after the season premiere. (In a related story, UFC Fight Night 28 brought in just 539,000 viewers on FOX Sports 1 earlier that night — down 35% from the previous week’s Fight Night: Condit vs. Kampmann show in Indianapolis — but I guess that shouldn’t surprise anybody.)

Of course, there’s always a way to spin stories like these, and UFC president Dana White defended the numbers on a UG post last night:

We were #1 on all of cable with M18-34 and M18-49. We also beat out the US Open and the Detroit vs. Red Sox MLB game. This is all part of the building process. We’ve made a commitment to work with FOX to build this network. If you look at all the other networks we’ve ever been on, we consistently pull strong ratings.

The first time we put our prelims on FX, we pulled 880K viewers and it grew, depending on the fight, up to 1.9 million viewers for UFC 156. Also, the TUF season with Carwin and Big Country averged 822K viewers, then Jones vs. Sonnen averaged 1.3 million viewers.

We currently hold the top 4 most watched telecasts on FS1 since the network launched. To be honest, our Prelim and Fight Night numbers weren’t bad considering we started on the west coast at 2pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday. The most important thing is last nights fights were awesome and this season of TUF is great.

Yes, we didn’t pull 1 million+ but we will. But, we also fucked up last night by not starting the main event later so that we could get a live lead into TUF. The bottom line is FOX couldn’t be happier with the UFC and the ratings we’re pulling and we couldn’t be happier with the way we have been treated by the network.

If the UFC is still putting out the most popular content on FOX Sports 1 — and they are, by a wide margin — it’s understandable that Dana would focus on the positives. But soon, the day will come when TUF‘s audience on FS1 drops below Fight Master‘s on Spike, and if that’s not a sign to pull the plug on The Ultimate Fighter, we don’t know what is.

Let the Ratings Decline Begin: Bellator to Begin Airing Events on Friday Nights


(Aaaaaaaannnnndddd it’s gone.) 

The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15 and TUF 16.

Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:

To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.

I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.

Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.

–J. Jones


(Aaaaaaaannnnndddd it’s gone.) 

The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15 and TUF 16.

Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:

To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.

I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.

Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.

–J. Jones

‘TUF 16? Episode 1 Pulls In 947k Viewers For Worst Premiere Ratings in Show’s History


(If you don’t tune in to see this guy put his shoulder through some drywall, then you’re just not a real fan.)

As first reported by MMAJunkie, Friday’s debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 16: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson drew just 947,000 viewers on FX. That number makes it the worst-performing premiere episode in the history of TUF, and marks a 27% drop from the 1.3 million viewers who watched the season premiere of The Ultimate Fighter: Live in March.

And while we’re piling on abuse, 947k viewers means that TUF 16‘s first episode is tied for the fourth-lowest-rated episode in the history of the show; only the 8th, 11th, and 12th episodes of last season did worse. That’s particularly bad news when you consider that premieres are generally the highest-rated episodes of each TUF season — aside from the Kimbo Exception — with the ratings numbers gradually sinking afterwards.

So how low will the numbers sink this season, and how long will it take before the total viewership drops below the show’s all-time bottom of 821k? Cue Dana White rant about how they got this [expletive] thing dialed in, and FX is actually really happy with the numbers. Come on guys. Put this sick dog out of its misery.


(If you don’t tune in to see this guy put his shoulder through some drywall, then you’re just not a real fan.)

As first reported by MMAJunkie, Friday’s debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 16: Team Carwin vs. Team Nelson drew just 947,000 viewers on FX. That number makes it the worst-performing premiere episode in the history of TUF, and marks a 27% drop from the 1.3 million viewers who watched the season premiere of The Ultimate Fighter: Live in March.

And while we’re piling on abuse, 947k viewers means that TUF 16‘s first episode is tied for the fourth-lowest-rated episode in the history of the show; only the 8th, 11th, and 12th episodes of last season did worse. That’s particularly bad news when you consider that premieres are generally the highest-rated episodes of each TUF season — aside from the Kimbo Exception — with the ratings numbers gradually sinking afterwards.

So how low will the numbers sink this season, and how long will it take before the total viewership drops below the show’s all-time bottom of 821k? Cue Dana White rant about how they got this [expletive] thing dialed in, and FX is actually really happy with the numbers. Come on guys. Put this sick dog out of its misery.

Is the UFC’s Fox Deal Hurting Business?

(Video courtesy of YouTube/StudioMMA)

An interesting quote from the interview above by our friends at StudioMMA got me thinking today whether or not the landmark TV deal the UFC struck with Fox is helping or hindering Zuffa’s bottom line.

According to UFC president Dana White, every day he deals with fans who say they had no idea that the UFC is broadcasting events on Fox and it’s affiliates like FX and Fuel TV.

“Our deal with Fox is seven years. Over the next two years we’re working our asses off to get this Fox deal dialed in… Fuel, FX and big Fox — as far as the production goes, as far as the type of programming we’re going to continue to put together, fine-tuning the Ultimate Fighter that’s live and reaching out and letting not only the hardcore fans, the sometimes fans and people who aren’t yet fans know that we’re on Fox. That’s a bigger job than people could imagine. How many people that I still talk to on Twitter that have no idea we are on FOX, FX or FUEL; oh, it’s crazy man. It’s crazy. So that’s what we’re going to be doing in the next two years.”


(Video courtesy of YouTube/StudioMMA)

An interesting quote from the interview above by our friends at StudioMMA got me thinking today whether or not the landmark TV deal the UFC struck with Fox is helping or hindering Zuffa’s bottom line.

According to UFC president Dana White, every day he deals with fans who say they had no idea that the UFC is broadcasting events on Fox and it’s affiliates like FX and Fuel TV.

“Our deal with Fox is seven years. Over the next two years we’re working our asses off to get this Fox deal dialed in… Fuel, FX and big Fox — as far as the production goes, as far as the type of programming we’re going to continue to put together, fine-tuning the Ultimate Fighter that’s live and reaching out and letting not only the hardcore fans, the sometimes fans and people who aren’t yet fans know that we’re on Fox. That’s a bigger job than people could imagine. How many people that I still talk to on Twitter that have no idea we are on FOX, FX or FUEL; oh, it’s crazy man. It’s crazy. So that’s what we’re going to be doing in the next two years.”

Add to the fact that FX and Fuel aren’t available in Canada (unless you count FX Canada, which shows past seasons of its popular original shows making it about as appealing as a Netflix membership), the only affiliate in the country that is licensed to air UFC events (Sportsnet) doesn’t broadcast The Ultimate Fighter Live! live. Instead, it’s aired two hours after FX shows it.

Early ratings numbers for the show illustrate a definite decline in viewership from the SPIKE TV-helmed shows, but that’s because SPIKE is available in most cable and satellite packages in North America.

White expressed his disappointment in the turn in viewership in a recent interview with MMAJunkie, but admitted that he expected some transitional speed bumps when he signed the deal with Fox. He also said that Zuffa and it’s Fox cohorts are optimistic that things will turn around.

“There’s so many things that are involved in those numbers,” White said. “I didn’t expect to jump on FX and do 3.5 million viewers right out of the gate. But here’s the thing: The format is awesome. It’s perfect. We’ve got a great season, and we’re going to build this thing. Believe me, the way that FX deals with their programming and how they handle it, they’re so analytical. These guys are like fucking rocket scientists how they break this stuff down and look at it. Trust me, everything is positive over there.”

What are your thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly of the first three months of the Fox era of the UFC?