Showtime’s declares ratings ‘victory’
Showtime’s Hershman Declares Ratings ‘Victory’ Strikeforce Carano vs. Cyborg was a homerun according to Ken Hershman, senior vice president of…
Showtime’s Hershman Declares Ratings ‘Victory’
Strikeforce Carano vs. Cyborg was a homerun according to Ken Hershman, senior vice president of Showtime Sports. The premium cable network did its biggest numbers yet in the sport with the first mixed martial arts card headlined by a women’s bout.
Since Saturday’s event, which went head-to-head against a replay of UFC 100 on Spike TV, numbers have been flying and statements have been made about which show actually did better.
In an interview with the Sherdog Radio Network’s Beatdown show Wednesday, Hershman, predictably, planted the Showtime flag atop the ratings mountain, declaring Showtime’s higher share superior to the UFC’s much bigger audience.
It’s typical television behavior, said Hershman of a press release sent out by Spike TV on Tuesday. Everyone wants to promote their agenda and their network and we are prepared to engage in that discussion because we are very proud of how our show did.
Preliminary numbers show that Strikeforce averaged about 576,000 viewers, while UFC counter-programming on Spike drew an estimated two million viewers of the 98 million homes it’s available in. Strikeforce reportedly peaked with an audience of around 860,000 during the Gina Carano-Cristiane Cyborg Santos fight (The network’s highest marks thus far had been 522,000 for a Kimbo Slice-David Tank Abbott showdown in February 2008.)
It was the highest rated MMA show on the network to date, stated Hershman. We’re obviously in a much smaller universe than Spike or the broadcast networks with 17 million homes, so the big apples to apples comparison for us is that our rating was a 2.1 and Spike’s was a 1.5 and that’s a victory in my book.
