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Robot Combat League came out swinging last night for Syfy. The 10 PM premiere of the mechanically inclined competition series Wednesday pulled in 1.3 million viewers for the network. While not as high as the 1.7 million the make-up artist series Face-Off averaged on Syfy in its most recent season, that’s a steel solid number for an unscripted show on the network. The tournament-style robot battle show’s 748,000 viewers Wednesday in the Adult 18-49 demo scored even better. That result for the Chris Jericho hosted series is a more than two-year unscripted premiere high for NBCUniversal owned network. The Face-Off premiere on January 26, 2011 got 896,000 in the demo. Last night’s Robot Combat League also garnered 200,000 views pre-premiere on multiple platforms including Syfy.com, VOD, Xbox 360, Roku and Hulu. Robot Combat League is produced by Smart Dog Media.
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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I found this show last night while flipping thru guide and was like WTF? We live in the future already?! Those bots were HUGE! The fight was exciting, hoping future eps have even more carnage. I’ll stay tuned.
the premiere was SO good this doesn’t surprise me! Can’t hardly wait for the next episode, or better yet… the entire season!
Best part of the show was the first battle, CLASH vs Cyclone. Underdog Clash beat down Cyclone in a satisfying shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid. I look forward to the next battle
Awesome work to everyone involved.
Robot Combat League is AWESOME. It really is Real Steel the reality show. It comes as no surprise with Matt Wrablik working behind the scenes. He is a creative GENIUS.
The concept is great and the execution is incredible. Hope that the season maintains momentum.
Those robots are no match for the walls of Jericho!
This show is an embarrassment and plays like a parody. The robots are slow and the fights are anything but exciting. Two year high for a reality premiere? Next week will see a big drop once word of mouth spreads.
I don’t know if you noticed, but you are the only one here who didn’t like the show. I don’t know how big your mouth really is, but I doubt it can spread the word to more than 700,000 people. Why don’t you stop being so negative and try enjoying something for once?
The battle was awesome, and next weeks match up between Scorpio and Commander is going to be even better. From what I can tell from all the online interviews, the fights are only going to get better as the teams learn to work together and with their robot.
So go be a sourpuss somewhere else.
Mr. FU sez,
I’m so glad the show is a hit. I’ve been hearing about it from one of the producers for a while. Great success for all involved – the show is going to be revolutionary.
stay tuned – it gets EVEN BETTER!
Congrats to Syfy, and the producers. It looks like one of the minds and EP’s behind Face Off was involved in this. I’m not surprised.
While it’s not quality scripted programming, it beats the hell out of wrasslin’, Quantum Kitchen, Ghost Whatever, and Psychic Nanny.
I really liked the show as well and will continue watching. My 9 yr old son thought the show was “Totally awesome!” =D I hope the show does well.
I feel they have a point, the smoke and sparks were manufactured and never came from actually being hit.
Matt Wrablik is a GOD!
i watch it for the first time last night and i thought it was kinda cool few thousand lbs robot. some of the woman on there are easy on the eyes so that makes it a plus cant wait tell next week
All these great reviews are fake the show is a travesty the combat isn’t exciting they merely bump into each other causing fake sparks to shoot the audience is obviously staged its an insult to everyones intelligence that this garbage was made
Robot Combat League is AWESOME!!!!
It makes me want to build a robot!
I don’t want to be a downer, but this show has way to much drama. I’m sure the audience is and hand picked. Also why use the fake sparks and the canned cheers from the audience. As a viewer I like the concept but get rid of the staged drama and fake audience. Thank you
My thoughts exactly, do really think that many women would really want to watch this. Audience=fake drama=staged sparks=fake attention span= 5 minutes
well if Tv By The Number’s ratings sources are correct, Robot Combat League’s ratings are tanking, falling every week.
its Tuesday broadcast has only charted top 100 its premiere week, and failed to the last 3 (meanwhile Face-Off still charts, so TVBTN isn’t lacking SyFy data)
its Friday rerun charted the first 2 weeks and then dropped off.
by the second week it was only drawing 1 mil views total, and then dropped which suggests its fallen below 1 mil total.
and to make it worse, TVBTN technically ranks the 18-49 demo (not the total), and to lower bound for their Top 100 is ~300k.
which means RCL’s 750k 18-49 key demo SyFy was so proud of has been cut by more than half, and is now less than 300k.
I love this show. It keeps me on the edge of my seat every time I watch it.
I even find my self cheering(under my breath of course).
Only problem are the sparks. It seems unrealistic and kind of like cheap fireworks. It could actually be real sparks. I don’t know. But the damage certainly is real.
Can you imaging getting punched by one of these things? Ouch.
Please cancel this show. Even reruns of firefly would be better. That show was awesome.