Proverbs

Monday, March 10, 2008 - by Scott Petersen - MMAWeekly

ProElite, Inc. and the CBS Television Network on Feb. 28 announced a multi-year agreement to bring mixed martial arts to the broadcast network. CBS will broadcast four MMA events per year, produced by ProElite's EliteXC fight division, as two-hour live primetime specials targeted for Saturday nights.

The agreement augments an existing relationship between CBS Corporation and ProElite, which began broadcasting its EliteXC live MMA events on CBS's Showtime premium cable network in 2007. EliteXC events will continue to air on Showtime.

Gary Shaw, president of EliteXC’s Live Events division, told MMAWeekly.com recently that the first telecast has not yet been determined, but that it will take place sometime between April and June of this year.

He also addressed the issue of the broadcast team of the CBS telecasts, believed to be one of the major points of contention between Ultimate Fighting Championship officials and CBS when the two entities were reportedly negotiating to bring the UFC to the network’s airwaves prior to the EliteXC signing.

EliteXC will still control the details of the production of the events, including matching the fighters; but CBS will be in control of the production of the telecast itself, including the announcing team.

“We're doing our own production. We're putting on the fights,” said Shaw. “They're broadcasting the event, absolutely. It's a joint effort between us. There are a lot of people involved in this joint effort including CBS, including Showtime, including us, including their marketing people, their outdoor billboard people, their radio people, their TV people.

“Remember, we do ShoXC that has a broadcast team; we do EliteXC that has a broadcast team; and CBS will have a broadcast team,” he continued. “We'll have three different broadcast teams that work with us.”

Although it remains to be seen how EliteXC events will be presented on CBS, Shaw said that the network didn’t have plans to alter production on events that continue to air on Showtime.

“They were very, very happy with the Showtime production and the competitive matches we're putting on Showtime. They like the product we're working with.”

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