By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Thursday night's episode of TNA Impact from May 13 marking the return to Thursday nights averaged a 0.93 rating off a first hour 0.85 rating and second hour 1.00 rating.

Comparatively, the last time TNA had first-run Impact programming on Thursday nights on March 4, the show scored a 1.14 rating. That was off a first hour 1.26 rating and second hour 1.02 rating.

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Looking at the quarter-hour ratings for the May 13 show, Impact opened with a 0.92 first quarter-hour rating and ended the night with a 1.01 eighth quarter-hour rating.

In a rarity for Impact, the peak quarter-hour rating was in the final portion of the broadcast. The seventh quarter-hour peaked with a 1.05 rating before dropping slightly to the 1.01 rating in Q8.

Q7 featured the entire RVD vs. Jeff Hardy vs. A.J. Styles three-way main event match. Compared to the Q6 rating, the main event segment was up 9.4 percent.

After the match, the rating declined slightly for the post-match fight between Hardy and Mr. Anderson, then the revelation on Desmond Wolfe and Chelsea orchestrating an "assault" against Abyss.

The first hour of the show dragged down the rating. After opening with a 0.92, the show dipped to a 0.80 rating in Q2 and Q3 before beginning a steady climb with a 0.89 rating in Q4.

The second quarter-hour featured Taylor Wilde vs. Tara in a Knockouts match and Douglas Williams vs. Brian Kendrick in an X Division match.

The third quarter-hour featured the beginning stages of the Abyss assault angle, Matt Morgan squashing Generation Me and Samoa Joe taking out Morgan, and The Band winning the TNA Tag Titles.

The fourth quarter-hour helped boost the ratings with the four-way tag match featuring Ink, Inc., Team 3D, Beer Money, and the Motor City Machineguns, followed by Jeff Hardy and RVD talking backstage.

After the 0.89 rating in Q4, the rating increased to a 0.98 rating in Q5 to begin the second hour. The Abyss assault angle continued and also featured Orlando Jordan's attack on Rob Terry before Jordan faced Tyson Tomko.

Caldwell's Analysis: Overall, there were encouraging signs inside the quarter-hour ratings with the show actually peaking in the second hour rather than in the first hour and the ratings steadily increasing from the end of the first hour to the complete second hour. TNA still faces an uphill battle trying to rebuild the audience, overall. The overall ratings are 25 percent off the pace from Thursday nights in 2010 and well behind the numbers in 2009 at this time. The quarter-hours are encouraging, though.

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