Broadcast News: Fedor-Rogers Slated for CBS Nov. 7

Here’s something I find increasingly curious about Strikeforce: in an industry that frequently appears wiretapped, they manage to keep their news in a lead box. No one anticipated their signing of Fedor Emelianenko in August, and no one pegged Emelianenko’s bout with Brett Rogers as a CBS attraction.

But that’s exactly what it is, per a Strikeforce press release Thursday afternoon that announced a November 7 primetime slot for the fight. The move puts them a week ahead of UFC 105, a Spike broadcast, and one week ahead of both boxing’s Manny Pacquiao/Miguel Cotto and UFC 106.

Maybe Strikeforce is gambling that the UFC won’t have the resources to assemble a show to create three consecutive weeks of programming. Or if they did, maybe they simply don’t care: in terms of available viewership and household penetration (oh, grow up), CBS isn’t in any danger of being smothered.

This leaves the UFC to counter in what they’ve clearly defined as an adversarial relationship with the network: minimal effort means some repackaged shows on Spike. The high end? A fight streamed live from the Coliseum in Rome between Wanderlei Silva and a Kodiak bear. Thank God for DVRs.