The Ultimate Fighter Returns to Taped Format Next Season, but Stays on Fridays

[VCURamFan]

From MMAFighting.com:

Jun 13, 2012 - The UFC's flagship reality show The Ultimate Fighter will abandon its "jive live" format in favor of its previous incarnation as an all-taped show when it returns for its next season.

UFC president Dana White confirmed the news to Yahoo! Sports on Tuesday night, following a season of declining ratings on new cable outlet FX.

According to television sources, the most recent season of TUF drew an average of just over 1 million viewers per episode, a number fairly significantly below the 1.5 million that tuned into the final season broadcast on Spike in 2011.

The "jive-live" format presented taped segments showing the fighter's daily lives and training, leading into a weekly fight, which was aired live from Las Vegas. It had been hoped that producing the weekly fights live would help retain the show's longtime audience and make the show DVR-proof.

However after a good opening with almost 1.3 million viewers tuning into the season premiere episode, ratings settled a bit lower than that as the season wore on. According to FX, however, its year-over-year key demographics were up significantly with TUF airing in the Friday slot.

The Friday night airings affected ratings, according to White, who during a recent group media interview, noted that the swiftness of the UFC-FOX deal left both sides scrambling to put together a schedule. Because FX's 2012 schedule had already been set before that, they were left with Fridays as an air date, a night he admitted was not ideal due to the sport's fairly young demographic.

The next season of the show, which will begin in September, will also air on Fridays. It will feature welterweights, as well as the longtime format that originally made it a hit on Spike.

Fridays are terrible for TUF. I barely watched 5 episodes this season.

[TexasRN]

I DVR everything anymore so the Friday slots were ok for me. I'm glad they won't be doing it live though. I'm just really losing interest in the show.


~Amy

[Tyburn]

I think they should do a fighter big brother....

But to make it more interesting...put their wives in the house...and if they dont do the challenges, or fail on the challenges, its their husbands that have to fight to stay in the house...then have a weekly poll for which couple to evict from the house also

[Liddellfan]

Originally Posted by Tyburn

I think they should do a fighter big brother....

But to make it more interesting...put their wives in the house...and if they dont do the challenges, or fail on the challenges, its their husbands that have to fight to stay in the house...then have a weekly poll for which couple to evict from the house also

TUF needs to be scrapped all together. It was getting old on Spike when it was recorded, didn't think it could get any worse......they managed though, the live one was terrible. I only watched the first two episodes and that was enough.