CBS Exec Kahl: "Coming back with fight No. 4."
October 6, 2008
CBS Senior Executive VP for Primetime Kelly Kahl spoke with several MMA media outlets on Sunday night, and re-affirmed the network’s commitment to finishing out their contract with EliteXC. Speaking with Michael David Smith of MMA Fanhouse:
“The numbers last night were terrific,” Kahl said. “The total viewer number was on par with May 31 and the demos were down just a little bit, but we were up against a couple good college football games and the baseball playoffs. … Last night was a step ahead, not a step back. To do roughly the numbers we did in May against much steeper competition bodes pretty well.”
“We have a four-fight contract,” Kahl said. “We certainly plan on coming back with fight No. 4.”
Speaking with MMAWeekly, Kahl stood behind the decision to go forward with a Kimbo fight, even after Ken Shamrock was forced to withdraw from the match:
In terms of Shamrock, that was a situation really out of our control,” Kahl continued. “We did what a professional organization would do. We got another quality fighter in the ring with Kimbo. We didn’t want to disappoint the audiences on television or in the arena. And we obviously put a good fighter in there. In terms of the surprising outcome, that’s just the fight game. Kimbo was a man for stepping up and taking the fight, and Petruzelli was a stud for taking it too. At the end of the day, we promised Kimbo Slice and we delivered Kimbo Slice.”
Kahl also spoke on the ratings and saw the ratings for last night as being the settling point, and what CBS would look to do going forward:
“It’s looking like the night is going to tuck into slightly behind the May card, but I think it’s hopefully more representative of the cards that we would do moving forward. Recognizing that there was a lot of hype around the first one, that the second was kind of an anomaly, because we did it in July when we weren’t able to support it as well with our CBS promotion. So I like to think this is the number we can look at going forward, which is a very solid, very sustainable number.”
