September 22, 2009

Ratings Follow-Up

The following is ratings info for the 9/17/09 edition of iMPACT from pwtorch. Once again, commentary is in italics.

"The September 17 episode of TNA Impact averaged a 1.21 rating, which was up 30.2 percent from the lowest rating in 13 months the previous week. Impact averaged a 0.96 on Sept. 3 and 0.93 on Sept. 10, but shot back up to Impact's normal level with the PPV lead-in show.

The show built nicely from start to finish, although the show peaked in the seventh quarter-hour with a 1.33 rating for the Knockouts tag match before dropping to a 1.24 rating in the final quarter-hour for Matt Morgan vs. Samoa Joe.

The first hour averaged a 1.15 rating and the second hour averaged a 1.27 rating. The first hour was dragged down by a weak 1.02 rating in the second quarter-hour of the show. The segment featured the first of three match-ups in seven days for D'Angelo Dinero and Suicide.

Looking at the key demographic ratings, the show shot up across the board. The rating with males 18-49 was the highest since July 23. The rating among males 18-34 was the highest since July 16.

Looking at the long-term comparisons of where this show fit in during the year, Impact was up 3.1 percent compared to the 2009 average. Removing the year-low ratings from the previous two episodes of Impact, the show was up 1.9 percent compared to the 2009 average.

Caldwell's Analysis: The show was right in line with the yearly average, but very strong compared to recent shows this summer. Obviously, the college football and NFL competition on Sept. 3 and 10 greatly impacted TNA's ratings. They're still at a 1.2 for the year without showing much upward mobility, but they're back to where they need to be in order to start growing that number."

A 30% increase from when they were competing with football the previous few weeks. This was actually a better scenario than I predicted. In a previous post I theorized that the recent ratings drop was a combination of football and the focus of the show being switched to the young talents who had been made to look inferior compared to the ex-WCWWECW stars. If this rating is any indication, it looks like it was all due to football. Take football out of the equation and the ratings shot back up to a level slightly higher than their 2009 average.

Let this be a lesson to the doom-and-gloomers as well as a certain white jeans wearing, guitar wielding former head of creative -- the young guys can draw just fine without the constant, overbearing presence of the stars of yesteryear and this just proves it.

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