...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The disappointment continues for the Ultimate Fighter 13 from a ratings standpoint, as Wednesday's eighth episode drew a season low 1 million viewers on Spike TV.
Spike TV officials revealed the ratings in an email to MMATorch on Friday morning.
Featuring this season's coaches challenge with Brock Lesnar and Junior Dos Santos in a football competition, as well as the wild card fight to determine the final quarterfinalist, the eighth episode lost 200,000 viewers from the previous week, which had tied for the season low already.
The episode did face heavy competition in their key demographic from the NBA playoffs on TNT, which brought in an average of 6.8 million viewers and a 5.04 rating in the M18-34 demo. By contrast, TUF brought just a .9 in M18-34 and M18-49, with a household rating of only .8, making it one of the lowest rated episodes in the show's history.
Penick's Analysis: Things aren't going to get any better for this show. With one week left before the two-hour final episode preceding the finale event on June 4, there simply hasn't been enough interest from fans for the fighters on the show. Add in the fact that there will now be no payoff with the coaches with Lesnar forced out of the UFC 131 main event and it completely kills what little interest there seemed to be in watching the coaches on the show as well. This has unfortunately been a complete letdown of a season for the UFC, and I would expect a timeslot shift back to its original time when season 14 comes in the fall.
DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
