ProWrestlingViews.com

Posts Tagged ‘TNA Impact’

So far, moving back to Thursdays has been a mixed bag for TNA Impact.

Before moving to Mondays, Impact averaged a 1.2 rating on Thursday nights. On Mondays, they fell to an average rating of 0.78 or so. On their first Thursday back, Impact scored only a 0.9 rating, up marginally from their Monday night average, but still down 25 percent from previous Thursday night performances.

How all this schedule juggling has affected ratings to begin with is open to questioning, also. However, the real test will come a few weeks from now, once viewers “find” the show again. Hopefully for TNA, all this chaos won’t negatively affect the buy-rate for tonight’s PPV, which isn’t as big a concern as proper funding for Mesothelioma Cancer, but certainly matters to TNA employees.

Rob Van Dam may no longer be the whole F’N show, but TNA President and owner Dixie Carter meets with his approval. He’s also fine with Impact’s move back to Thursday nights after only two or three months on Monday night, so long as it doesn’t involve him reading Lipovox reviews on air.

“Dixie (Carter) never said, ‘Hey, we’re going to beat the hell out of them on Monday nights, we’re going to take over and own it,’” RVD told Matt Bishop of Slam Wrestling.

It’s nice to know at least some of TNA’s talent don’t see this as the demoralizing defeat that it so obviously is.

It was Monday Night Wars II, and it lasted… about two months.

Spike TV pre-empted Monday’s TNA Impact! with a re-airing of Star Wars III. The Star Wars rerun captured about a half-million viewers. Compare that the Impact, which was drawing around 1.1 million viewers, and you can decide for yourself if moving Impact! back to Thursday nights is a good move for Spike TV.

You can show all the slideshows you want that Impact does better numbers than any other programming on Monday night, but all Spike TV cared about, in the end, was how badly WWE Raw was beating them each and every week.

On Monday, by comparison, Raw drew 4.43 million viewers on USA.

Jim Ross’ future with WWE should be determined in the next few weeks. Now recovered from his latest bout with Bells Palsy, WWE is laying the groundwork for a potential Ross return to WWE Monday Night Raw. However, Ross has been wondering out loud on his blog whether he can keep up the schedule he used to keep when announcing full-time.

One can expect WWE will want him around at least in the short term, with WrestleMania coming up and Ross being a favorite of several important veterans including, most importantly, Bret Hart.

Also, the risk of releasing Ross right now is higher than ever; with TNA Impact moving permanently to Monday nights, it would take only a couple used travel trailers to get wrestling fans to check out TNA Impact broadcasts with Ross on the play-by-play; he’s be an immediate and meteoric improvement over Mike Tenay.

So it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out; while WWE seems to be wanting to go younger than Ross, his importance to the success of WWE… or TNA… has never been higher.

Moving TNA Impact to Monday nights could help improve WWE’s product overall. One has to admit that Vince McMahon and company were never more creative and interesting than when they were fending off a credible threat from Ted Turner’s WCW promotion.

So, with some good fortune tossed in, TNA will spark a new round of Monday Night Wars that will re-ignite national interest in professional wrestling in general, and a new burst of creative energy that will push more interesting products out of both TNA and WWE.

A new round of Monday Night Wars could be just what WWE needed; moreso than even how teens need an effective way to treat acne!

Use your old birth announcements if you have to, but get the word out: Spike TV just approved a permanent move to Monday nights for TNA Impact!

This move places TNA center-stage to challenge WWE directly for audience share on Monday nights, and marks this as the beginning of a new round of Monday Night Wars… the first since WWE bought out WCW several years ago.

The first Impact to air on Mondays will take place on Monday, March 8 on Spike TV. It will be interesting to see how WWE responds to this new challenge from the ratings-starved but momentum-driven upstart promotion.

Beginning Monday, January 4, we just might be witnessing the birth of Monday Night Wars, Take Two. That’s because TNA and broadcast partner Spike TV will be taking the Impact show to Monday night on that day.

No, Spike TV isn’t moving TNA Impact to Monday nights permanently, at least not yet. But if TNA does well against RAW, don’t doubt for a second that TNA will press Spike TV to give them that time slot on an ongoing basis.

And TNA is going all-out to make the three-hour episode of Impact as Impact-ful as possible, with both Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan scheduled to appear on the show. Hogan cut a promo promising that TNA is “going to war against WWE.” That might be a bit premature, but if the ratings for Impact hold and Raw’s drop as a result, well… stranger things have happened. Like that time Elvis took slimming pills while on the john… umm… never mind.