Source: TNAStars.com

The final cable rating and viewership estimates for last night’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling on Spike TV are now available. The numbers show that last night’s episode saw a strong recovery following the previous week’s expected Christmas-related drop in viewers. Last night’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling scored a final cable rating of 1.16 which represented about 1,510,000 viewers over the course of the show’s two hours.

Last night’s final rating is 0.13 of a point higher and approximately 152,000 more viewers than last week’s episode, which scored a final cable rating of 1.03 with an average audience of 1,358,000 viewers.

When we know more about how last night’s show scored hour-by-hour, we’ll post that information in this spot. So check back early next week! Last night’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling on Spike TV had more total viewers than prime time and late night programming on other cable channels with a national audience including TLC, Tru TV, TBS, WE, History, E!, and Animal Planet – among others.

It is also worth noting that total viewership for any one episode of TNA’s iMPACT Wrestling is hard to estimate. This is because DVR+1 and DVR+3 figures (the amount of people who watch the show on their DVR within one day and three days of recording it) usually add 200,000 more viewers to the final viewership number reported above. Plus, Spike.com uploads each full episode of iMPACT Wrestling to its website for free online streaming for a four month period. The online streaming versions of the show typically generate about 20,000 views before they are taken down (some episodes have many more viewers, others have less). Also, the TNA channel on YouTube posts a large portion of each episode online with seemingly no date noted as to when they will be removed. However, there is no way to know whether or not DVR or online viewers are part of the original viewership estimate, so these figures are rarely reported by professional wrestling websites. However, in the interest of providing a definition for the full spectrum of “viewers” for each episode we feel this information is still good to know!

If you’re interested in iMPACT Wrestling’s ratings performance for 2010 and 2011, then check out TNAStars.com’s Ratings War area. In the Ratings War area you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling vs. Monday Night RAW from the spring of 2010 and iMPACT Wrestling vs. Superstars from all of 2010 and the first part of 2011. Also, you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling’s viewership numbers from week-to-week in 2011. Enjoy!