Following up last weeks bounce back rating The Ultimate Fighter looked to continue its growth last night during episode eight which featured Dylan Andrews defeating Zak Cummings via majority decision.
According to Nielsen sources, the eighth episode of The Ultimate Fighter 17 came in 40th overall out of the top 100 cable shows with season low 1.12 million viewers and a 0.6 in the 18-49 adult demographic.
This episodes preliminary estimate is somewhat of a surprise as last week had a really solid bounce back from two weeks of sub 1.15’s. It should also be noted that once again The Ultimate Fighter lost overall audience from its lead-in movie (1.19), but did gain ground in the 18-49 adult demographic. Justified, which has been really solid all season long, also had more viewers than The Ultimate Fighter, but they are also not exactly the same demographically focused.
When it came to the competition from the national networks in the 9 p.m. time-slot the UFC went up against another repeat of NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS that drew a very low (compared to last week) 11.92 million viewers and a 1.9 18-49 adult demographic (5 share). The only national network show that wasn’t a repeat was ABC’s The Taste which did a respectable 3.36 million viewers and a 1.1 18-49 adult demographic (3 share).
On the cable side of things at 9 p.m. time-slot the UFC went up against TBS’s The Big Bang Theory, Discovery Channels Dual Survival and the World Baseball Classic on MLB Network. The Big Bang Theory and Dual Survival both did extremely well landing at 3.30 million viewers for the TBS show and 1.78 for the Discovery Channel show. The Ultimate Fighter did squeak out a victory over the World Baseball Classic as its numbers fell below 1.0 again on the MLB Network.
Side note, speaking of the World Baseball Classic, Sunday night (USA vs Canada) averaged over 760,000 viewers making it the second highest rated game on the MLB Network ever (behind Sox/Yankees last October). However, the final half hour of the Sunday night game did peak at 1.25 million viewers. Meanwhile, Friday and Saturday night MLB Network World Baseball Classic games were only able to pull 673,000 and 576,000 total viewers. Safe to say, Bellator type numbers for the World Baseball Classic this go around.