MMA

CBS Blows Opportunity with MMA Card

After quite a bit of media build up this week, CBS was set to begin their prime-time mixed-martial arts showcase with Kimbo Slice Saturday night. For the record, I think it was a great idea to put this on network television, and I can only hope that other MMA outlets and boxing soon follow suit.

Having said that, CBS blew it. It is currently 8:45pm here on the left coast, and the Slice fight is over. The only problem — the card hasn’t yet begun on the local CBS channel. That’s right, prime time fighting — on tape delay.

The fight card doesn’t begin for another 15 minutes, and I know who won. It’s readily available on the Internet, just like anything else in sports. While the fights were shown live on the East Coast, those of us out here in the little town of Las Vegas (not to mention Phoenix, LA, SF, Denver, etc) are forced to wait for a tape delayed broadcast.

Why on the world would CBS be this stupid? Yes, now it will be on in prime time on the West Coast. But you know what? I’m going out now. I don’t need to watch this fight, I’ll see it another time.

The target audience for a network television MMA card is people who already follow the sport in some way. Those that do already know how it ends. This was a terrible decision by CBS and Viacom, and they may have pissed away a chance at success here.

The ratings for this will certainly be less than they could have been had this been shown live. The insistence on networks to cater to the East Coast is pathetic. Why blow off half of the country? Would you show a Yankees game on tape delay? Hell no. We’ll watch it at five or six instead of not watching it. Some things can be scheduled by time zone, like Lost or 24. Others can’t, like ALL SPORTS.

Terrible decision CBS. Now you’ve screwed us all when this experiment is cancelled for poor ratings. That’s what you get when you only involve half of the country.

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