Dana White confirms Ultimate Fighter's return to Wednesdays in 2013

[BluenoseGreig]

By Dave Meltzer on Nov 14, 9:04p

Esther Lin, MMA Fighting

After declining ratings this past year, FX will be moving The Ultimate Fighter reality show back to Wednesday nights, where the show aired for many years on Spike TV.

The 17th season of Ultimate Fighter, which is currently being filmed in Las Vegas with Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen as coaches, is expected to air on Wednesday nights, starting in January on FX.

The show moving to a better night was announced by FX Executive Vice President Chuck Saftler back in October. Malki Kawa, the manager of Jones, said the move would be to Wednesday in an interview with The Fight Network. Subsequently, MMAFighting.com confirmed the new date with Dana White.

In doing so, the show is moving back to the night it ran on Spike for many years. The show moved to Fridays at the start of 2012, with the move from Spike TV to FX. Even though moving to a significantly higher rated network, and having the fights air live for the first time in the show's history, ratings fell to the lowest level in the show's history.

A move back to taping the shows and concentrating more on storylines this current season led to ratings declining even more. Numbers have shown a significant increase the past two weeks, but they are below the level of the lowest-rated shows on Wednesdays on Spike.

Ultimate Fighter debuted in 2005 on Monday nights, following the highly-rated WWE Monday Night Raw show on Spike. The show was an instant hit to the Male 18-34 audience of wrestling fans who stayed to watch UFC. People like Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin became major pay-per-view drawing cards off the initial season, which also produced enduring stars like Chris Leben, Josh Koscheck, Stephan Bonnar, Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez..

After Raw left Spike, Ultimate Fighter was first moved to Thursday, because the show was so highly rated but the original Monday shows didn't air in prime time, thus weren't helping Spike's prime time ratings average. When the NFL Network started broadcasting games on Thursdays, TUF ratings took a major hit and Spike moved the show to Wednesday, where the number rebounded. The show remained in the Wednesday at 10 P.M. time slot through the end of 2011.

Safler, in October, made a veiled threat at Spike TV, indicating they were looking at going to war with them next year when Spike begins broadcasting Bellator programming. It is believed Spike will air two Bellator first-run shows, the weekly fights as well as a reality show. The night of the week has yet to be announced for either show. With the fight show starting in January, the announcement is expected to be imminent.

Bellator has been running on Friday nights after moving from Saturdays in 2011.

Both nights are problematic for an MMA show, which is why expectations are that Spike will also be moving the weekly fight show. Saturday is tough because UFC runs its pay-per-view shows on Saturday nights, as well as FOX shows and a lot of other live shows. Plus it has to compete with HBO and Showtime boxing events.

Friday has proven to be a bad night for MMA programming since it appeals to heavily to Males 25-40, an age group that isn't traditionally watching much television that night. Plus, Bellator has going head-to-head with the established WWE Smackdown, which has a strong appeal to male viewers in the same age group that watches MMA.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2012/11/1...esdays-in-2013

[BluenoseGreig]

and the update on this article.............

FX official: The Ultimate Fighter moving to Wednesday 'unlikely'

9


By Dave Meltzer on Nov 15, 7:34a
Tom Szczerbowski-US PRESSWIRE

Officials at FX say an announcement will be made in the next two or three weeks of the new time slot for the show.


Officials from FX are denying an official decision that 'The Ultimate Fighter' (TUF) reality show will be moving to Wednesday in early 2013, and have gone as far as to say it not likely to happen that way.

The story of the move to Wednesday was first broken on The Fight Network, a Canadian television channel which covers boxing, MMA and pro wrestling. In an interview with Malki Kawa, the manager of UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, Kawa contended Wednesday would be the home of the upcoming season featuring Jones opposite Chael Sonnen. The season will begin airing on FX in January, and lead to a scheduled title fight between the two on April 27 in Newark, N.J. UFC President Dana White confirmed to MMAFighting.com the Wednesday move.

However, FX officials say not so fast.

"FX has not announced the official date or night that the next installment of TUF will air, however, it is highly unlikely it will air Wednesday nights," wrote Dominic Pagone, the Vice President of Media Relations of FX in a message to MMAFighting.com. "The official announcement will be coming in the next two or three weeks."

Before making the move to FX earlier this year, Ultimate Fighter had built up a steady audience that usually hovered between 1.2 million and 1.6 million viewers in a Wednesday night time 10 p.m. time slot on Spike TV. This current season, airing on Friday nights at 10 p.m. on the significantly higher rated FX, the show has ranged between 624,000 and 1.06 million viewers.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2012/11/1...esday-unlikely

[Rich Davie]

I called this a month ago :

Yeah man.

Why have TUF on Friday nights when that's the beginning of the weekend for the working class.

Most young males in the demographic that TUF is going after aren't think of Friday night MMA... they're thinking about going out to either party, get drunk, get laid, or spend time with their woman or family.

Apparently everybody with the exception of whoever is in charge of TUF programming is aware of this.

TUF had great success here in North America when it aired on Wednesday nights... that's the night that TUF belongs on.

Silly fuckers in charge of programming.