UFC
"The Ultimate Fighter 13" debut episode on Spike garners 1.5 million viewers
Mar 31, 2011 - 7:35:45 PM "The Ultimate Fighter 13" debut episode on Spike garners 1.5 million viewers

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The debut episode for The Ultimate Fighter: Team Lesnar vs. Team Dos Santos aired on Spike on Wednesday night in a new timeslot for the reality show, which had run in all of it's previous seasons at 10PM ET.

Airing at 9PM ET instead, the 13th season of the show brought in an average of just 1.5 million viewers, although it remained the #1 show on all of cable for Spike's key demographics of men 18-34 and men 18-49.

The debut number was actually one of the lowest in the show's history, coming in 100,000 viewers less than the 12th season debut, which had Georges St. Pierre and Josh Koscheck as coaches.

The episode brought a 1.0 household rating, but drew well with men 18-34, garnering a 1.93 rating for that demo. A replay of the episode at 11:50PM ET brought 633,000 viewers.

Penick's Analysis: This is a shockingly low number to kick off this season. Maybe Brock's draw was severely damaged by the loss to Cain Velasquez; maybe the earlier timeslot threw regular viewers off; maybe the calmer, cooler and more collected Brock Lesnar just doesn't interest people as much. I'm not sure what happened here, but regardless of what factored into it, this number can't be considered anything but a disappointment. With how much press Lesnar did this week and with him being who he is I'm simply shocked by this number. Perhaps it will bounce back up as the season goes on, and perhaps fans just like to see him in the cage, and maybe not so much outside of it. Who knows right now, but this wasn't the start to the season that the UFC was hoping for.