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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Bellator's fourth season kicks off on MTV2 on March 5 from the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, Calif., and Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney has now given some details on how the season will play out.
Running Saturday nights, the 12 week seasons will run from 9-11PM ET in its normal timeslot, but when cards are up against a UFC event, as they will be on March 19 with UFC 128, they have the flexibility to move cards earlier in the night.
"That's part of the magic we have here," Rebney said, in comments made to MMAJunkie.com. "When I was sitting down with the MTV folks, they said, 'Look, if there's a big UFC event, if there's a pay-per-view event, we'll kick our show an hour or two earlier so that it can be an MMA night for fans.' They can go from MTV2 to Spike TV or go from MTV2 to pay-per-view.
"You can make a night of it. Get some beers, grab a pizza, hang out with your buddies, and watch MMA for five hours instead of two and a half or three. It's continuity and ultimately trying to serve the fan base I'm a member of and you're a member of."
Bellator is hoping to gain a better foothold with more accessibility to their events than their previous deal on Fox Sports Net, which featured significant preemptions in many regions and led to a lot of frustration among fans. Season four features tournaments in the featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and light heavyweight divisions.
Penick's Analysis: It's a nice thought to expect fans to add Bellator to their schedule on major fight nights and have big MMA parties for both Bellator and the UFC. However, I just don't know that it's going to be the case, as many pay-per-view ordering fans don't even watch the Spike TV prelims before events. I honestly believe they couldn't have picked a worse day of the week to run weekly events, as fans aren't going to take every Saturday night out of their schedule to watch Bellator events. Had they run any other day during the week they'd have a better shot at keeping an audience on a week to week basis, but I think they'll struggle with Saturdays to gain a hold of viewership on MTV2. It's good that they won't try to go head to head with major events as well, but with shifting timeslots it won't help in keeping a week to week run of viewers, either.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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