From the New York Times:
CBS’s broadcast of the Elite XC mixed martial arts program Saturday night — the first on a broadcast network in prime time — generated a preliminary national rating of a 2.7, or an average of 4.3 million viewers. The viewership fell from the 5.9 million CBS generated this season for the crime series that usually run Saturday nights on the network. But the national rating covered the 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time period and did not include the main event, won by Kimbo Slice over James Thompson. In Nielsen Media’s 54 metered markets, the rating peaked at a 4.7 from 11:30 to 11:45, when Slice fought.
The 9-11 p.m. portion finished first against CBS’s competition in young male and young adult demographics. Still, the 4.3 million viewers who watched the much-hyped Elite XC program fell short of the 5.9 million who watched the Rampage Jackson-Dan Henderson U.F.C. lightweight title fight on the Spike cable channel in September.
That actually seems like a pretty good rating, 4.7 in the quarter hour when the Kimbo fight aired. That's pretty good for that late on a Saturday night. I bet it would have been even better had the fight aired on time.
At least to me these don't seem like disastrous ratings that would encourage CBS to back out of the deal. But I'm sure a lot of the viewers were just curious and may not tune in again, leading to a sharp dropoff next time they host a card.
I think the next card on CBS will be Kimbo vs Brett "The Grim" Rogers, sometime in late August.
No comments:
Post a Comment