One is the digital sports channel of Ch. 10, one of the market’s three major stations which dominate the airwaves the way the big three networks did in the U.S. in the 70s. The only people who get the channel are those with HD Digital tuners, which is about 30% of the country. The show was broken up into two blocks, the 2-4 p.m. block, which did 123,000 viewers, and the 4-5 p.m. block which did 122,000 viewers. UFC Wired (the syndicated version of the show similar to Unleashed), which airs on the station every Thursday, in recent weeks has done between 95,000 and 100,000 viewers. (Dave Meltzer)

I may have more info on MMAterial Facts soon…

The deal with Seven is for the catalog of fights as well as the Strikeforce Challenger cards, not the regular SF cards. Here is the press release. The final paragraph states what is contained in the Shine deal and thus for Australia.

“LOS ANGELES, February 2, 2010 – Shine International has expanded the STRIKEFORCE brand internationally, selling more than 70 hours of STRIKEFORCE’s mixed martial arts (MMA) programming in six markets across Europe, Australia and Latin America. Virgin Media Television’s Bravo in the UK, Turner in Latin America, FX in Portugal, Ukraine’s Megasport, Seven Network Australia and Dahlia TV in Italy have all purchased STRIKEFORCE’s library of TV programming.

“STRIKEFORCE is the leader in mixed martial arts content as proven by the huge demand for their programming around the world. They have the world’s best fighters, the world’s best events and they know how to translate that into fast-paced programming that captures what will soon be the most popular sport in the world,” said Chris Grant, President of Shine International.

This includes 30 episodes and 56 hours of fights that have aired on NBC and SHOWTIME®, respectively. Internationally distributed content includes upcoming live fights through February 2012 as well as STRIKEFORCE Challengers fights, pitting STRIKEFORCE up-and-comers against each other. After signing a landmark deal to air live events on SHOWTIME last year, STRIKEFORCE earned the premium network its highest MMA rating ever on August 15, 2009 with “Carano vs. Cyborg.”

There’s not enough context to answer the question or reach a conclusion about anything, really. The original post added:

“Top Programs Across Sports Channels
Rank Program Channel Average Peak
1 Live: AFL: NAB Cup Geelong v North Melb Fox Sports 2 130,000 201,000
2 UFC 110 Main Card Live ONE 123,000 189,000″

So, UFC 110 was the second high draw on the “Sports Channels” that day. That seems to make some sort of sense to me. But that’s not a lot of context either. I believe 110 aired live at ten in the morning Australian time. Did the other one air at the same time, at five in the morning, three in the afternoon, or at 9:17 at night? And when is tea time down under? What are Aussies normally doing at that time of day? What were the demographic comparisons?

My guess is that it is a good number. We’ve just not been given any reason to understand why. Without context, the whole thing is pretty meaningless up here on the top half of the earth. Maybe if we all stood on our heads it would all be perfectly clear.

The Sydney Morning Herald estimated that about 250K Australian viewers watched UFC 110 on One HD. Obviously the Olympics and other local shows and sporting events did as you would expect, and as you have already said Kelsey, hard to judge the success of the event based on that. The Abu Dhabi ratings were indeed superb and there seems to be a huge buildup for UFC 112 already.

http://mmapayout.com/2010/02/mmaterial-facts-022310/

On a side note, Strikeforce has a TV deal with Channel 7, which is supposed to be a popular network than Channel 1 is, which is the channel UFC 110 was televised. It will be interesting to see what kind of numbers Strikeforce gets for their April show in Australia.