Saturday Night Fights peaks at 6.51 million viewers
June 3, 2008 by Sam Caplan
The following is a press release from CBS and EliteXC:
Ratings for the final 51 minutes of CBS’s inaugural CBS ELITEXC SATURDAY NIGHT FIGHTS mixed martial arts broadcast (11:00-11:51 PM, ET/PT), which were unavailable Sunday, delivered an average audience of 6.12 million viewers, according to updated Nielsen live plus same day ratings for Saturday, May 31.
The audience peaked at 6.51 million viewers from 11:30-11:51 PM which featured the night’s main event—Kimbo Slice’s victory over James Thompson.
Among key men demographics, the broadcast peaked from 11:30-11:51 PM with a 4.1 rating in men 18-34, 4.0 rating in men 18-49 and 4.3 rating in men 25-54.
The addition of the final 51 minutes lifted ratings for the entire broadcast. CBS ELITEXC SATURDAY NIGHT FIGHTS (S) (9:00-11:51 PM) delivered a 3.0/06 with 4.85m viewers, 2.2/07 in both adults 25-54 and adults 18-49, 2.3/09 in adults 18-34, 3.1/09 in men 25-54, 3.0/10 in men 18-49 and 3.2/12 in men 18-34. In the 9:00-11:00 PM time slot, CBS was first in the adults and men demographics, second in both households and viewers.
Compared to CBS’s 9:00-11:00 PM regularly scheduled programming on Saturday during the 2007-08 season, CBS was up +16% in adults 25-54 (from 1.9/05), +57% in adults 18-49 (from 1.4/04), +156% in adults 18-34 (from 0.9/03), +121% in men 25-54 (from 1.4/04), +173% in men 18-49 (from 1.1/03) and +357% in men 18-34 (from 0.7/03).
Adults Men Adults Men Adults Men Viewers
25-54 25-54 18-49 18-49 18-34 18-34
9 PM 1.4 1.9 1.4 1.9 1.5 2.1 3.38m
9:30 PM 1.6 2.2 1.6 2.2 1.7 2.4 3.66m
10 PM 2.2 3.0 2.1 2.6 2.1 3.0 4.68m
10:30 PM 2.6 3.6 2.5 3.5 2.7 3.8 5.53m
11 PM 2.8 3.8 2.6 3.6 2.7 3.8 5.84m
11:30 PM 3.1 4.3 3.0 4.0 3.1 4.1 6.51m
is that good?
Yes
Attention Dana White…get the UFC on FOX pronto.
Its very good especially if you look at the +300% in males. It’s great for advertising and also in the overall ratings game while competing with big sports events on other networks.
3.0 is a very good number. They beat UFC 75 on Spike, it’s a new record high.
I’m actually hoping the UFC does a deal with ESPN or HBO, not network primetime. That way we won’t have to watch them adulterate our sport and turn it into a perverted fucking circus.
yeh, 6.51 million is good, espcially when they were shooting for 3-4 million.
Honestly, I thought this was a really good showing by EliteXC, they had to face some tough decisions for the refs.
However, I’m beginning to wonder if shows on network TV are being referred different than PPV shows. The last fight night had several early stoppages ( irwin/alexander , karo/alves). Maybe they’re afraid of showing blood/brutal KOs.
Of course nobody screams conspiracy after fight night….
and what else does this tell us? I know it is good, but can we assume the fact that it started off with lower numbers and rose throughout the show that that is a very good thing? and does this say an issue is with marketing for it, and if they market better maybe they will have better numbers throughout the show?
7 mil, insane…. most were there for kimbo though