Source: TNAStars.com
The final cable rating and viewership estimates for last night’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling on Spike TV are now available. The numbers show that last night’s episode only took a minor dip in direct competition against the New York Jets versus Denver Broncos game that aired on the NFL Network and in some local markets. In fact, last night’s episode only dropped seven hundredths of a point (0.07) as compared to last week’s rating. iMPACT Wrestling also lost only slightly more than 100,000 viewers which is a very strong showing against the NFL game which brought in over 7,225,000 viewers. Last night’s episode of the show scored a final cable rating of 1.16 which represented about 1,619,000 viewers over the course of the show’s two hours.
Last night’s final rating is 0.07 of a point lower and approximately 111,000 less viewers than last week’s episode, which scored a final cable rating of 1.23 with an average audience of 1,730,000 viewers.
When we know more about how last night’s show scored hour-by-hour, we’ll post it here so check back on Monday! Last night’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling on Spike TV had more total viewers than prime time and late night programming on other cable channels with a national audience including MTV’s Beavis and Butthead, FX’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Cartoon Network, ESPN, A&E, Comedy Central, WE, Tru TV, History, Bravo, the Food Network, TBS, Lifetime, and HGTV – among others.
It is also worth noting that the show’s total viewership is hard to estimate. This is because DVR+3 figures (the amount of people who watch the show on their DVR within three days of recording it) usually adds about 200,000 more viewers in addition to the viewership number reported above. Plus, Spike.com uploads each full episode of iMPACT Wrestling to its website for free online streaming for a three month period. The online streaming versions of the show typically generate about 20,000 views before they are taken down (some episodes have many more viewers, others have less). However, there is no way to know whether or not DVR or online viewers are part of the original viewership estimate, so these figures are rarely reported by wrestling websites (but they’re still good to know!).
If you’re interested in iMPACT Wrestling’s ratings performance for 2010 and 2011, then check out TNAStars.com’s Ratings War area. In the Ratings War area you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling vs. Monday Night RAW from the spring of 2010 and iMPACT Wrestling vs. Superstars from all of 2010 and the first part of 2011. Also, you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling’s viewership numbers from week-to-week in 2011. Enjoy!
I noticed a few weirdos on some of the more well-read news websites (*cough* dirtsheets *cough*) that said last night’s rating and viewership numbers must be a big disappointment, a bit of a bummer for the promotion, depressing, etc.
WHAT?!?
Pulling these types of numbers when in direct competition with the NFL showing a game that had some great hype around it is awesome! Another excellent and competitive showing by iMPACT Wrestling. Well done.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you put in perspective WWE’s promotional budget is infinitely higher than TNA’s, the roster several times larger, and the fact that it has been around for decades and WWE only draws slightly higher than double TNA’s audience that is VERY impressive.
Imagine if TNA continues to grow year by year as it has and the WWE continues to stagnate as it has, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to see TNA equal the ratings on WWE.
Excellent points, William.
By the way, I’ve revised the ratings up by 0.01 for this week based upon new information that came in.