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By MMAMemories.com

It looks like Strikeforce’s new NBC show will premier on the network on April 12. It’ll be a half-hour program and the time slot is kind of a tough one - from 2-2:30 AM ET on Saturdays.

The show will not only follow NBC’s popular “Saturday Night Live,” but also another NBC show, “Poker After Dark,’ which runs from 1-2 AM. Officials from the network say that the demographic from the poker show lines up pretty well with the audience mixed martial arts usually generates.

Jerry Petry, the executive vice-president of NBC Universal Television, was beaming about the addition of the brand-new program, to the point of possible hyperbole.

“As a leader in this arena, Strikeforce will be able to deliver some of the finest and most intense action ever seen on broadcast TV,” he said.

With this announcement, it is now official that NBC will beat CBS to the punch with mixed martial arts. CBS will debut its own series, in conjunction with Elite XC, on May 31.

The show, entitled, most appropriately, “Strikeforce on NBC,” will be one of highlights, along with fighter features. One of the fighters who is profiled in the kickoff episode is Cung Le, and that’s obviously good timing, since he just won the middleweight title win over Frank Juarez last weekend.

The show will run every week, and it offers a great exposure opportunity for MMA in general and Strikeforce in particular. Unlike Elite XC, which was created specifically to leverage the associations of former boxing promoter Gary Shaw with Showtime, Strikeforce really seems to have a grip on grassroots promotions, with a sellout of over 18,000 in San Jose’s HP Pavilion in what was California’s first sanctioned MMA event a couple of years ago. But there has been no word on whether any live fighting would be offered in the future as part of the NBC package.

The Strikeforce/NBC marriage was the latest step in the explosion of mixed martial arts to broadcast network television (which is different than cable television, kids). And the trend may be far from complete. Internet reports say that ESPN is currently in talks with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which could ultimately lead to live events on ABC (both ESPN and ABC are controlled by Disney).

That would make the movement truly “rapid fire” in nature, with CBS, NBC, and then ABC getting into the fray. Fox would no doubt be closely behind, inasmuch as it already carries MMA product on its FoxSportsNet cable property.

Let the over-saturation begin.