The story of the season was the low ratings of the show from the onset despite the appearance of former UFC heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar. There were a lot of factors at play, notably a change in time slot, the obscurity of Junior dos Santos, and a dearth of personality from the contestants, all leading to a season of disappointment by anyone's standards.
Despite the emergence of a compelling story (Tony Ferguson's drunken rant in episode 9), ratings did not improve for the season's finale taped show. From a press release:
TUF earned a 0.9 household rating - 1.14 in M18-49, a 1.2 in M18-34, and an average audience of 1.2 million viewers.
That's about in-line with the season average.
In related news, the UFC 130 prelims brought in 1.3 million viewers to Spike TV as a lead-in for Saturday night's pay-per-view. That's right around the average for prelims on the network.