By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Last Thursday night's episode of TNA Impact scored a 0.99 rating (rounded up to a 1.00 rating) off a first hour 0.95 and second hour 1.03.

Impact started with the lowest quarter-hour of the show with a 0.90 in Q1, then steadily built to a 1.05 in Q7, only to drop to a 0.96 rating in Q8 for the end of the show.

Impact had a brief over-run past the second hour. The over-run, which included the beginning of programming following Impact, jumped to a 1.21 rating.

First Hour

The show started with a weak 0.90 rating for the TNA Tag Title announcement, plus the opening match with The Band vs. Ink, Inc.

Q2 gained nearly a tenth of a rating to the show average for the big Ric Flair and Jay Lethal back-and-forth exchange. It was the highest-rated quarter-hour of the first hour.

Q3 and Q4 settled to the 0.95 level with a slight drop-off from the Lethal-Flair segment. The final 30 minutes of the first hour featured Samoa Joe vs. Hernandez with no hype and Doug Williams vs. Max Buck.

Second Hour

TNA positioned the "ratings draw" Beautiful People at the top of the second hour, which led to another strong ratings increase on the show.

That fifth quarter-hour, which featured Angelina Love vs. Lacey Von Erich, increased to a 1.05 rating following a 0.96 rating in Q4.

Typically, the quarter-hour rating drops off following the expected spike from a featured Beautiful People segment. However, TNA scored the same 1.05 rating in Q6 and Q7.

Q6 featured Beer Money vs. Team 3D and Jay Lethal vs. Desmond Wolfe, continuing from the strong Q2 segment.

Q7 featured Hulk Hogan's appearance after the Lethal match and the complete Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett mid-ring verbal confrontation that had been hyped throughout the show.

Despite hype throughout the show, the main event of Jeff Hardy vs. Mr. Anderson vs. Abyss did not fare well. Q8 had the largest drop-off during the show, finishing with a 0.96 rating following the 1.05 rating in Q7.

The eighth quarter-hour was up against the fourth quarter of the NBA Finals Game 7, with the Lakers vs. Celtics game tightening on the scoreboard. That's a potential big factor contributing to the drop-off for the main event.

Caldwell's Analysis: A good sign for TNA is that Impact seems to be breaking from the undesirable pattern of ratings dropping off as the show goes on. Since returning to Thursdays, only one episode has not featured an increase from the first to second hour. That was the record-low June 3 episode that scored a 0.87 rating.

The overall picture for this episode of Impact up against the NBA Finals Game 7 is that TNA held its own, there's some room for growth, and the follow-up, as always, will be key to whether they can build momentum on Thursday nights. Adding more programming on Thursdays nights has potential to eat away Impact's audience, though.

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