In a column expressing disdain desperately trying to masquerade as objectivity, USA TODAY media columnist Michael Hiestand just doesn’t get it:

In broadcast networks’ long march from trying to appeal to enormous audiences — in the pre-cable TV era — to just trying to hang onto viewers after decades of audience erosion, it’s time for mixed martial arts.

“I firmly believe it’s the sport of the future,” says Gus Johnson, who calls CBS’ NFL and NCAA college basketball games and will work MMA’s broadcast-network debut on CBS on Saturday. “The kids love it. And they’re walking in a cage, so there’s something very primal about it. The cage itself is a great piece of theater.”

And it’s a place where competitors, using various forms of fighting, can try moves such as the “rear naked choke” and the “guillotine.” Given such actions sound like antics you might already find on various broadcast-network reality shows — where bug eating and wife swapping already seem passé— it wouldn’t seem that MMA would be any monumental departure from broadcasters’ standards. Still, CBS Chairman Sumner Redstone, at a recent business conference, said he doesn’t “like” the sport and feels it’s not “socially responsible.” At the same forum, Ed Goren, president of Fox Sports — whose corporate cousin Fox Sports Net already carries MMA — said the broadcast network isn’t interested in the sport because “we don’t need money that badly.”

Not that it’s a shoo-in that any broadcast network can make much money on MMA. The debut of CBS’ four-part CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights (9 ET) is just the latest experiment of taking something that’s drawing niche audiences on cable — such as Arena Football or so-called action sports — and seeing what it can do for broadcasters. It’s also another attempt — such as NBC’s quickly defunct XFL and ABC’s expanded prime-time Saturday college football — to give broadcasters some pop on TV’s least-watched night, especially with the largely absent young viewers advertisers covet.

CBS’ entertainment division, rather than its sports unit, will produce coverage. But Kelly Kahl, senior executive vice president/CBS prime time, notes MMA isn’t all that different from what could be on CBS Sports: “It’s absolutely a legitimate sport. It’s a violent sport. So is boxing. So is football.”

Johnson, taking jujitsu to help understand MMA, calls MMA “a complex chess match.” The key, he says, will be to tell novices “what goes on when the fight hits the ground. … What America has to understand is the guy on the bottom — especially if he’s a jujitsu master — is in the better position.”

His take is not uncommon for entertainment and TV columnists, who seem to think that figure skating and gymnastics should be the only sports broadcast on network television:

MMA slinks from cable to airwaves @ USA TODAY