By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

TNA Impact on Thursday, March 20 scored a 0.89 rating off a first hour 0.95 rating and second hour 0.84 rating.

For the first time this year, Q1 was not the highest-rated segment of the show. Instead, Q2 was slightly higher.

Without the benefit of a "Cops" lead-in on Spike TV, Impact opened with a 0.95 rating, down 20 percent from last week's Q1 rating, which followed "Cops."

The second quarter-hour then inched up to a show-high 0.96 rating. From there, Impact dropped off to the 0.9-level and the show finished in the 0.8-range.

First Hour Break Down

Q1: Impact opened with a 0.95 rating for Eric Young and Abyss brawling backstage and into the arena, plus one commercial. This was by far the lowest-rated Q1 of the year. For a non-holiday Impact (excluding Thanksgiving, Halloween, and the Fourth of July), it was the lowest Q1 rating since June 27, 2013.

Q2: Impact inched up to a 0.96 rating for Ethan Carter III vs. Bobby Lashley and one commercial.

Q3: Impact slipped to a 0.94 rating for several backstage segments and one commercial.

Q4: Impact was the same at a 0.94 rating for Gail Kim vs. Lei'D Tapa and two commercials.

Q5: Impact actually dropped to a 0.88 rating at the top of the hour for the Beautiful People re-visiting last week's issues, one commercial, backstage segments, and ring intros for the Tag Title match.

Q6: Impact dipped to a 0.83 rating for the three-team Tag Title match, one commercial, and backstage segments.

Q7: Impact dipped to a show-low 0.80 rating for more video segments and two full commercial breaks.

Q8: Impact increased slightly to the same Q6 rating - a 0.83 rating for Magnus vs. Samoa Joe for the TNA World Title, plus one commercial.

Caldwell's Analysis: Not good. Yes, Impact was against a strong night of college basketball, but I thought last week's show was so bad that it surely affected viewership this week. Plus, titles and match-ups mean so little in TNA these days that building a show around two title matches in the second hour was not going to help. They'll be against the NCAA Tournament again next Thursday, so it might take a few weeks to see if they can recover.

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