TNA Impact drew a 1.1 rating last week, rebounding from the recent dip after TNA lost viewers to Thursday night college and pro football competion. Total viewership on Spike TV was 1.5 million.

The real story is within the quarter hour numbers. The show opened with a 1.17 and ended with 1.08. That in and of itself is an indictment of the bookers who failed to increase the audience over the course of two hours, which is pretty much unheard of in the two hour wrestling show era dating back to Raw and Nitro expanding.

Even more telling is that the show hovered in the 1.17 to 1.11 range the first 45 minutes, but then dropped below 1.0 for the sitdown interview segment with Sting and A.J. Styles. Sting is the top paid wrestler in the company (along with Kurt Angle), and Styles is in the top tier, yet their interview the week after Styles won the TNA World Title centered around the supposed primary storyline in TNA drew the lowest rating of the show. One factor to consider is that it was the first quarter hour to contain two commercial breaks, so that mitigates some of the blame, but not all, on Sting and Styles and the bookers' efforts to get viewers to care about their relationship.

Then the rating leaped at the start of the second hour to a 1.23 rating for the underhyped Awesome Kong vs. ODB match for the Knockouts Title and Kurt Angle vs. Hernandez (total in-ring action in those two matches was about six minutes, by the way). TNA notoriously has a different pay scale for top women as they do top men despite a multi-year track record of the women drawing better ratings than top paid men. From there, the ratings sunk to 1.14 for three interview segments, a 1.07 for Matt Morgan vs. Eric Young (including two commercial breaks), and barely rebounded to a mere 1.08 for the main event of Team 3D & Bobby Lashley vs. British Invasioin & Rhino. Lashley was supposed to be the big signing for TNA, but they underhyped that match and failed to build up British Invasion as main event worthy and thus it drew a lousy main event rating.

Keller's Analysis: There is no excuse for a PPV caliber line-up presented on Impact to loser viewers as the show progressed, no matter what else was on TV. But so much was wedged into that two hours there wasn't time for it all, much less giving proper context and hype to make it seem meaningful beforehand and put it in perspective afterward. The script length of last Thursday's show should have been sliced in half, and what was left would have still been pushing the two hour limits, but at least they wouldn't have had to make the ridiculous decision to have the top drawing division on the show - the Knockouts - have a two minute unannounced, unhyped title match.

This show should have been built around Foley's monumental heel turn last week on Abyss (as screwed up as the execution of it was), but instead it was lost in a crowd of an overbooked inefficient show.

[Awesome Kong art credit Neal Obermeyer (c) PWTorch]

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