Dana White’s “The Fighters” debuted a couple of weeks ago on the Discovery Channel and drew a disappointing 347,000 viewers. A number Dana White himself called “horrendous”. The show hasn’t aired since, which led to speculation that the show could be canceled.
After weeks of doubts from fans, The Fighter’s Peter Welch finally responded yesterday to a fan on twitter asking if the show had indeed been canceled.
@MattyTLFC @danawhite Yes Matt sorry to say it has. Such a great show, we hope to get it on an audience appropriate network.@Pilgrim_Studios
— Peter Welch (@PeterWelch371) February 5, 2014
Payout Perspective:
Unfortunately, the debut of “The Fighters” didn’t live up to Discovery’s expectations. The hope was to gather boxing and UFC fans to tune in and bring in strong numbers and a strong M18-34 demo, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
Dana White, in a Lunch Q & A session last week, stated that he “promoted the sh*t out of the show”, but that Discovery didn’t do much on their end. Realistically, another reality TV show about combat sports is nothing new to TV viewers with The Contenders and The Ultimate Fighter. There was nothing ground breaking about it and nothing new that casuals hadn’t seen before. As the show was announced to air, Dana White mentioned that they had been working on the show for a while and had pitched it to many networks. Discovery was the only network that bought it and Dana White was incredibly ecstatic about the opportunity. It seems that one show was enough for Discovery to pull the plug.
Well 347,000 is actually good numbers guys… I mean lets spin this around a bit, The TUF Nations did 107k (not bad when you consider its the 49th season and airing in January). Also . err. I’m sure if they let it continue we would of seen 500k or so … I mean these programs take time to build. Just like we’re seeing with the fantastic Prelim numbers, they’re the best they’ve been in 6 months! The UFC and Dana White are spot on guys, Discovery Channel and fans don’t know a thing.
they can still ait it on Fight Pass 🙂
Fight Pass is trash….
“the Fighters” was geared towards a very SUPER ULTRA niche audience/ market …No surprise it got cancelled…
It will get picked up by someone. Might not be a good network or a good time slot but it will get picked up. 347k is a lot more ratings than some of these others shows and reruns are getting. Just depends on the cost of getting it.
I don’t understand … what type of numbers were they expecting? I didn’t see one commercial or promo for it, and the poor-ratings piece on here was the first time I ever heard of it (really).
Clearly Discovery…a network that does anywhere from 1-3 million viewers on their originals couldn’t have cared less about this show..
And Dana coming out and saying the ratings were horrendous and that Discovery didn’t promote it probably caused the quick cancellation…
Lol nice spin smashed brain
no boxing gyms in my area new about the show! I am inviting New England to box our Florida kids May 17 2014 got the venue,cabins on a lake, restaurants to feed the fighters etc. I talked to a 100 guys who would have watched Fighters every week