Following up last weeks season-low rating The Ultimate Fighter looked to bounce back with an episode that featured both Josh Samman and Uriah Hall moving onto the semifinals with solid first round victories.
According to Nielsen sources, the eleventh episode of The Ultimate Fighter 17 ended up being about 8% higher than last week.
The show finished with a preliminary rating of 1.178 million viewers and jumped up to 0.7 in the 18-49 adult demographic (slight gain over last week).
All in all, not exactly the best rating being that both Samman and Hall are favorites to fight in the finale in a few weeks and headlined this episode. Although, unlike last week where TUF lost viewers a portion of the Iron Man 2 lead-in audience, this week the lead-in on FX did not even register in the top-100 cable shows. In other words, the UFC brought in viewers to the 9 p.m. time-slot, which is always key for a show like this. It should also be noted that the show after TUF, Justified, pulled in its usual 2.249 million viewers.
When it came to the competition from the national networks in the 9 p.m. time-slot the UFC went up against a repeat of NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS which fell sharply from last week to 10.02 million viewers and a 1.6 18-49 adult demographic (4 share). ABC’s Dancing With The Stars won the time-slot battle with 13.60 million viewers and a 2.2 18-49 adult demographic (6 share).
On the cable side of things at 9 p.m. time-slot, the UFC lost out again against TBS’s The Big Bang Theory, History Channels Top Gear and TruTv’s Hardcore Pawn. To no surprise, The Big Bang Theory ruled the time-slot with a scoring 3.483 and 3.633 million viewers during the 9 p.m. – 10 p.m. hour. The other shows all were well above 2 million viewers and easily beat the UFC in overall viewership and adult demographics.