HDNet to Air Martial Arts Spectacle Friday

FY Productions and HDNet, Mark Cuban's high-definition channel, will team up to offer the next edition of the Mixed Martial Arts "Ring of Fire" event this Friday, Feb. 16.

"ROF 28: Evolution" will be staged at the new Broomfield Event Center in Broomfield, Colo. This so-called "Mixed Martial Arts" event, which features a variety of hand-to-hand combat, will feature combatant-athletes from around the world, including standouts from other MMA series such as UFC, K-1 and Pancrase.

HDNet will be the sole national broadcaster, with the Feb. 16 event to be produced and offered as two separate programs, the companies said in MMA Ring Report.

Cuban, based in Dallas where the entrepreneur also owns the NBA's Dallas Mavericks basketball team, is trying to build out his channel's national audience with ambitious programming (such as some recent NASA space launches), and big name program hosts (such as Texas native son Dan Rather).

Technically speaking, HDNet is available nearly anywhere in the continental U.S. via a DirecTV HD dish. Last fall, the Dallas Morning News said the HD channel's actual subscriber base at about 4 million homes, which is about 3.5 percent of all TV homes in the U.S.