Coming off of the best ratings for the half hour program, Spike TV’s “MMA Uncensored Live” announced this week it is expanding to an hour format. It coincides with its move to 10PM ET/PT on Thursday, September 20th.
Via Spike TV press release:
“MMA Uncensored Live” features radio personality Craig Carton as host with former middleweight fighter Nate Quarry and mixed martial arts veteran journalist Luke Thomas as fight experts.
Launching this past February, “MMA Uncensored Live” has attracted the biggest names in the sport as guests, including Jon Jones, Chael Sonnen, BJ Penn, Alistair Overeem, Tito Ortiz, Josh Koscheck, Roy Nelson, Junior Dos Santos, Frank Mir, Stephan Bonnar, and Rashad Evans.
The most recent installment aired September 6, featuring guests Dave Bautista and Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal, and delivered a series record 696,000 viewers.
Payout Perspective:
While its last half hour installment did well, the big question is whether it can sustain a consistent level of viewership for an hour each week. From a content perspective, it makes sense for Spike TV to expand the programming for its Thursday night combat sports night of programming. But, will anyone watch an hour show if it doesn’t have King Mo (or another ratings grabbing fighter) on each week. Going up against NFL Football each week this fall will be a test to see how the lineup will do overall.
They’re prepping to cover their own brand next year.
Smart move.
Good move. Spike has been a ratings train wreck since it lost new UFC content, ahead of Bellator next year. Whatever they have been putting on at 10pm has failed to garner even a 0.2 in the key demo, so they cannot do any worse.
I agree with Sampson that they will focus more of their content, but still less than half, on Bellator. It is actually a pretty good show, not inside MMA level, but definitely watchable.
MMA Uncensored is closing in on matching the ratings for Ultimate Fighter on FX….
TUF 16 only did 940,000 viewers down from 1.3M for TUF: live last season…