Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney spoke at the Bellator 34 post-fight press conference about the promotion's future and the company's odd television deal with FSN.
Here is what Rebney had to say, via Sherdog.com:
"I can tell you thankfully there will be a season four, five, six and beyond," Rebney said. "Four will be starting at the beginning of 2011, and my hope had been that at the Philadelphia event [last Thursday] we'd be able to announce what's going on from a television perspective. A lot of people always ask the question about Fox Sports Network and about the delays of broadcasts and the preemptions and the nature of that network, and we have overcome that issue, which is great for us. It's great for our brand development. We'll be making some firm announcements in terms of start dates and in terms of networks and in terms of times and days for shows in relatively short order."
It'll be extremely interesting to see what they have worked out with FSN. The thing is, I don't see a way in which they aren't preempted on FSN in any scenario unless they shows late at night. Even if they do daytime shows on weekends (which would probably be instant ratings death, even more so than preemptions and the like), they would still suffer from preemptions on a regular basis. With FSN affiliates being the home for many NHL, NBA and MLB teams in many cities, that means there's live sports on a year-round basis on their channels. Here, FSN Detroit carries all three leagues and also has an auxiliary channel (and Bellator usually airs live on that channel) for when there are conflicts between two of the sports. That leads me to believe that they will no longer be broadcast on FSN because that's the only way to avoid preemptions, as there is zero chance any affiliate would give Bellator priority over the home team, even if it were contractually allowed. So we'll see who steps in to televise Bellator because I'm becoming more and more convinced it won't be FSN.
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