MachidasStraightLeft -
I think it's pretty safe to say that if the final numbers are over 4 million then it was a success.
However, I just know that we're gonna hear Dana say "This was a home run for Fox. We fucking killed it. Number 1 in our timeslot for 18-34 male demos..." blah blah blah.
You can tell how nervous he is about Fox by how insanely sensitive he is to the slightest criticism about ratings.
yeah, when he says tuf is a homerun for FX he means tuf is the retarded kid who comes on the field and everyone pretends he hits an inside the ball park home run so everyone can feel good about themselves.
ufc on fox however is not bad... the average MLB game in the same saturday night timeslots pull around 3million viewers with a 0.7 rating in adults 18-49. the worst ufc shows on fox pull nearly twice that rating in adults (the worst 2 ufc fox shows pulled 1.2's... this last fox show pulled atleast a 1.6 with likely more once the final tally comes in)
Even at 3.4 million viewers, it still beats most college football games on fox.
The fuel numbers, the fox numbers and even the fx numbers are good enough for fox... it's just not good enough for the UFC.
Vera vs Randy on spike via tape delay outpulled 2 fox shows (2.9 million viewers). bisping vs mayhem outpulled 2 fox shows (2.5 million average with 3.5 million peak).
the fox numbers arent good enough for the UFC.
And my biggest problem with these numbers is that unless the UFC can routinely pull ufc on fox 2 type of numbers they may not be able to economically support more ppv type shows on fox.
WIth UFC on fox 2 type of numbers you can have 8 Fox fight nights a year with ppv quality cards.... thereby reducing the amount of ppv's.
every 300k buy ppv card should be on fox... it should not be on ppv. that should be the goal. but in order for fox to justify a 6 million dollar per show licensing fee they need ufc on fox 2 type of #'s.
2 years ago, this would no have been a problem. the firday night time slot and fuel is what's killed them.
couture vs vera was pulling 2.9 million viewers on a spike... a card like ufc on fox 5 would have pulled 4.5 million easily on fox just a year ago. Infact, it did. Rashad vs Davis pulled a 4.7 million average. Fox killed the ufc with the friday night and fuel timeslots.