Source: Various
The final cable rating and viewership estimates for last night’s episode of iMPACT! on Spike TV are now available. The company’s flagship show had a very minor drop in its final ratings number, but overall viewership increased which has to make the folks backstage somewhat happy. Last night’s episode of the show scored a final cable rating of 1.14 which represented about 1,540,000 viewers over the course of the show’s two hours. This week’s final rating is 0.01 of a point lower (but about 12,000 more viewers) than last week’s episode, which scored a final cable rating of 1.15 with an average audience of 1,528,000 viewers.
When we know more about the ratings breakdown, we’ll report how the show rated in each of its two hours. TNA Wrestling on Spike TV had more viewers last night than programming on other cable channels like A&E, TLC, and FX.
For comparison’s sake, TNAStars.com promotes a completely fictitious Thursday Night War as a comedy piece on this website. With that in mind, this week’s episode of Superstars scored… oh wait – Superstars was canceled by WGN America and is now an international show only! WWE may have won the short-lived 2010 Monday Night War, but TNA Wrestling won the 2010 – 2011 Thursday Night War!
If you’re interested in iMPACT!’s ratings performance for 2010 and the first half of 2011, then check out TNAStars.com’s Ratings War area. In the Ratings War area you can see a comparison of iMPACT! vs. Monday Night RAW and iMPACT! vs. Superstars from all of 2010 and 2011. Enjoy!
Wait, the rating dropped, but the viewership grew? I’m confused?
Radditz,
I believe and Joe correct me if I’m wrong, that the rating is the percentage of people watching TV that night. So if more people are watching TV that particular night than the previous week, you could actually have a lower rating(percentage) but still have a higher total of viewers.
Ah I see Joe, thanks.
*William B I was meant to say, haha.
William is correct.
For example, in a very bizarre situation you could have double the amount of people watching cable television on a Thursday night (for whatever reason) and then have a big drop in the ratings, but a steady viewership number.
The reason why I opted to highlight the fact that the viewership went up this week is because all of the reports that I read on the interwebs focused on the negligible 0.01 ratings drop. The interwebs are so negative in their view of TNA Wrestling. So, I figured why not take the opposite and focus on the negligible 12,000 increase in viewership?
If the rest of those websites can emphasize the negative, why can’t TNAStars.com emphasize the positive? 🙂
@ Radiitz As long as I don’t get confused with a dirt sheet writer I’m ok with it!
Hey Joe,
just wanted to say i still don’t get how that is possible :S im not from america so not sure how there ratings work sorry. And i agree with you there i hate how websites focus on the negative of tna so im glad you didn’t. 😀
Hey Robin, thanks for the feedback.
To put this in a smaller number perspective, lets just say 1 million people are watching all TV programs on a given night and you have a 2 rating for 2% of the total viewers watching TV that night. You have 20,000 viewers.
Now let’s say the next week, you have 1.5 million people watching tv, and you have a 1.5 rating for 1.5% of the total viewers that night watching your program. Then you have 22,500 watching.
So your rating (percentage of total tv viewers) is lower, but since the total number is higher you have more viewers.
Basically more people watched your program that night as well as the rest of television. Sport playoffs, American Idol, movie specials, ect can bring more viewers to the TV on given nights, so you rating may be lower but you still may have grown your audience as well.
Hope that helped and wasn’t to convoluted.
Hi Robin,
Thanks for the comment. William is correct in his discussion regarding how you can have a lower rating one week, but manage more viewers than the previous week. To complicate matters even more, we could choose to report the weekly “share” that iMPACT! receives.
A “share” is the percentage watching a particular channel out of all the people who are watching television during a given time period. What William talks about in his discussion above is how a “share” is calculated. Reporting the “share” was very popular back during the original Monday Night Wars because RAW and NITRO were bringing in such amazing numbers on a weekly basis. These days, I rarely see any show’s “share” reported.
A ratings point, however, changes on a weekly basis based upon on the number of people watching television each week. So one week, a 1.0 rating may represent 700,000 viewers while the next week it may represent 750,000 viewers. The value of a point changes each week (each day, actually). We’re not privy to the details of how each point is calculated every Thursday night, but the folks at TNA Wrestling get a viewership breakdown by “share” and ratings point for each minute of their show.
I hope that makes sense and helps add to William’s explanation.
Best,
Joe
Your explanation actually clears up even more for me. I had confused share and ratings point. I guess from the old days, I hadn’t realized since you mentioned it that they don’t mention share anymore. Thanks Joe.