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The primary way that television executives judge whether or not their programming is successful is by the final ratings number and viewership estimates that the program receives after each airing. This is no different in the world of professional wrestling. Below you can find links to the history of the brief Monday night ratings war between iMPACT Wrestling and WWE RAW and the equally brief Thursday night ratings war between iMPACT Wrestling and WWE Superstars. In fact, you can even find links to the data showing a comparison between the ratings of WWE Monday Night RAW and WCW Monday NITRO from the mid-to-late 1990′s! This page is updated frequently, so please be sure to check back each week for the latest information on the ratings and viewership estimates for iMPACT Wrestling.
2011 – Winning the Thursday Night War; Building a Thursday Night Audience
2001 – WWE Purchases WCW; The War is Over
2000 – WWE RAW Goes Undefeated for a Second Year
1999 – WWE RAW is Undefeated for the Entire Year
1998 – After Years of Losing, WWE RAW Begins to Beat WCW NITRO
1997 – WCW NITRO Dominates the Ratings War
1996 – A Memorable Memorial Day Weekend Brings Us the nWo
1995 – The Ratings War Begins…
iMPACT Wrestling: Improving on Success (January 2012 – Present)
In 2011, iMPACT Wrestling achieved its highest average rating and highest estimated viewership in the history of the show’s tenure on Spike TV. Also in 2011, iMPACT Wrestling taped 8 of its 52 episodes in arenas located outside of the iMPACT Wrestling Zone at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. One of the biggest successes of 2011 was the October 20, 2011 episode which was the first episode in the show’s history to bring in more than two million viewers.
These successes provide a great base of accomplishment for the promotion to build on in 2012. In 2012, iMPACT Wrestling needs to find new ways to expand its viewership. The company also needs to find new and innovative avenues to take its show on the road in exciting yet affordable ways. One of the biggest challenges that iMPACT Wrestling has in 2012 will likely be finding new ways to advertise its weekly two hour program to a larger television and general entertainment audience. Below you’ll find a chart showing the rating and viewership estimate for each week’s episode. Since the method by which cable ratings are calculated can often be confusing and at the whim of major television events, the viewership estimate figure tends to give a much more legitimate indication of how iMPACT Wrestling performed. More details on viewership, in general, can be found below the chart.
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| January 5, 2012 | 1.11 (1.18 / 1.05) | 1,595,000 |
| January 12, 2012 | 1.13 (1.17 / 1.10) | 1,604,000 |
| January 19, 2012 | 1.20 (1.20 / 1.19) | 1,675,000 |
| January 26, 2012 | 1.17 (1.19 / 1.15) | 1,597,000 |
| February 2, 2012 | 1.16 (1.14 / 1.18) | 1,613,000 |
| Show Notes: | The February 2nd episode of iMPACT Wrestling was part of the first set of tapings to ever take place outside of the United States. The show was taped on January 28, 2012 in Wembley Arena in London, England. The live attendance at the show was the largest attendance for any televised show in iMPACT Wrestling history and the second largest crowd (televised or house show) in the promotion’s history. | |
| February 9, 2012 | 1.05 (1.04 / 1.07) | 1,502,000 |
| Show Notes: | The February 9th episode of iMPACT Wrestling was part of the first set of tapings to ever take place outside of the United States. The show was taped on January 28, 2012 in Wembley Arena in London, England. The live attendance at the show was the largest attendance for any televised show in iMPACT Wrestling history and the second largest crowd (televised or house show) in the promotion’s history. | |
| February 16, 2012 | 1.06 (1.02 / 1.10) | 1,524,000 |
| Average Rating | ||
| The 2012 averages will be calculated at the end of the year. Stay tuned! | ||
The total viewership for any one episode of 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 (you will not find them below, but this is good information to keep in mind as you review the statistics in this chart). 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!







