By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Thursday’s Impact Wrestling television drew 399,000 total viewers on Pop TV, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. The number was up from the 362,000 viewers the show accumulated the previous week.
Powell’s POV: A great number for Impact as the recent trend of the viewership inceasing continues. Last year, Impact Wrestling produced 297,000 viewers viewers on the Thursday, March 30 edition.
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Amazing how this company continues to rise in ratings despite all the people who supposedly don’t watch it.
It’s great to see upward momentum 🙂
Clearly, they’ve outgrown the Impact Zone and PopTV. Those are the two top issues to be addressed at this point.
You’re right about the PopTV thing. That channel’s low viewership ceiling is hampering potential growth.
They haven’t quite outgrown the Impact Zone though. Despite the terrible crowd reaction, at least Universal Studios offers the mirage of a crowd. I only base this off past attempts to do live events which turned out low attendance.
I understand Anthem not wanting to risk sunk costs before migrating away
What’s fascinating is the ratings increase playing in front of the worst crowd in pro wrestling. Clearly, Universal Studios provides the perfect situation financially, but at this point, I think it’s actually costing them money.
They have a rise in viewership, but it’s not translating into money. Everyone is happy Impact’s ratings are rising, but no one is excited by Impact.
A big part of that is the influence of the zombies in the audience. As with sit coms that use canned responses to tell us what’s funny, Impact needs lively crowds to tell us this is something we should be investing in. That’s why I was in favor of Impact paying fans in Canada to cheer. It is a television show after all. Incentivizing the crowd to be more vocal is part of the game. It’s not like WCW or WWF/E haven’t tried that before.
Looking at this product from the outside, it seems to me that Impact is a company that’s growing almost by accident. There’s still no promotion. They’re on a network that’s hard to find airing in front of a crowd that’s just looking to soak up AC.
It would seem to me that for a potential investor/TV partner, sprinkling a little money on Impact could yield quite a bloom.
BUT, Impact has to create the illusion that what is being seen is exciting enough to engage the live crowd.
Why not try a college? WWE held NXT at Full Sail University for God’s sake. Why couldn’t Impact find another college in the Orlando area to air a series of tapings from? Wouldn’t a university come with a built in audience much like the theme park? I’d imagine any extra production expense would be minimal (say the price of Alberto El Patron’s salary?)
Eventually, Impact is going to have to take a risk. They have 5-6 months before football starts. It’s either now or never to secure the new eyes on the product.
Almost at 400,000 which is huge for their PopTV run. I sure do miss the million and half or so it got on Spike though