Last night, The Ultimate Fighter followed up its “knockout of the season” episode with a new episode that featured Team Jones taking control with a dominant unanimous decision victory from Collin Hart over Kevin Casey.
Surprisingly, episode four did quite well in the ratings and even ticked up from last weeks heavily advertised “knockout of the season”.
According to Nielsen sources, the fourth episode of The Ultimate Fighter 17 came in 34th overall out of the top 100 cable shows with 1.25 million overall viewers and a 0.7 in the adult 18-49 demographic.
This episode was a slight increase from last weeks arguably lackluster overall viewership ratings. It should also be noted that this week The Ultimate Fighter did not receive a strong lead-in from the FX movie as compared to previous weeks. So even without seeing the 18-49 male number, this is already shaping up to be a ratings win for the UFC.
When it came to the other networks this was arguably a very difficult night overall. The UFC was up against a portion of the state of the union address (started at 9:16PM,) new episodes of Top Gear, Face Off and even Dance Moms. The state of the union address was the obvious leader for the night with 33.5 million overall viewers, which is actually the lowest in a decade. Top Gear, Face Off and Dance Moms, which are all in the same time-slot all eclipsed 1.5 million overall viewers and 1.5’s in the 18-49 demographic.
Again, when I look at all of the numbers, I consider this episodes number a huge victory for the UFC. Not only did the UFC overcome a lackluster lead-in, but was able to increase its number from last week even with the President of the United States dropping in to crash the 9PM party.