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Research and Ratings

ESPN's "Friday Night Fights" Sees Lowest Season Audience Since Inception In '98

ESPN2 averaged 409,000 viewers for its 26 “Friday Night Fights” telecasts this season, marking the series’ least-viewed season since its creation in ’98. The audience this season was down 25% from last season. This season’s schedule also saw increased competition from additional Friday night NBA games, as well as the London Games. In addition, the ’12 figure is down 19% from the audience two years ago. “FNF” peaked in ’06 with just over 600,000 viewers. From ’02-07, the series averaged between 450,000-550,000 viewers. The “FNF” telecast on April 13 was the most-viewed episode this year for a junior welterweight bout featuring Albert Mensah-Michael Katsidis (11:25pm ET start, latest all season). Below are the top five “FNF” telecasts from this past season.

MOST-VIEWED ESPN2 "FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS" TELECASTS IN '12
DATE
START (ET)
FEATURED BOUT(S) LOCATION
VIEWERS
(000)
4/13
11:25pm
Albert Mensah-Michael Katsidis Las Vegas
669
1/27
9:00pm
Ruslan Provodnikov-David Torres/
Ji-Hoon Kim-Yakuba Amida
Airway Heights, Wash.
594
2/24
9:13pm
Juan Carlos Burgos-Cristobal Cruz Dover, Del.
547
1/13
9:00pm
Chris Martin-Teon Kennedy Las Vegas
534
6/8
10:22pm
Kelly Pavlik-Scott Sigmon Las Vegas
527

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

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