By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

TNA spent six months, according to Eric Bischoff, building up the storylines that culminated at Bound for Glory on Sunday and played out on Thursday's Impact.

TNA drew 1.9 million viewers, the largest Thursday night audience since January 21. They succeeded in drawing increased interest in their product. Basically, many of the TNA viewers who strayed from watching it recently but heard about what happened at BFG, or those who watch every two or three weeks or a few minutes here and there, all congregated at the start of Thursday's show.

The opening quarter hour drew a 1.53 rating. That's up from the 1.16 opening quarter hour last week and the 1.25 two weeks ago.

By the end of the two hour show, they were below the rating for all but the first 15 minutes of last week's show. By the end of the two hour show, they were right back with the same number of viewers they averaged two weeks ago.

It's like the person who diets and exercises for six months to lose 15 pounds, then regains it all in two or three weeks of undisciplined bingeing.

TNA had about an hour to celebrate today - the hour between getting the total audience number of 1.9 million, up from the 1.7 million last week and 1.5 million the week before and when the quarter hour ratings came in.

TNA quarter hours went from 1.53 and 1.52 in the first 30 minutes to a 1.41-1.43 range the next 45 minutes, to a 1.35-1.37 range the next 30 minutes, and then crashed to a 1.23 in the final quarter hour.

Imagine a stand-up comedian who has a great budget for hyping his "biggest show ever" and he packs the comedy club which normally is only 75 percent full. But then his act begins and all of those people who showed up because of all of the hype with posters and flyers and word of mouth end up leaving gradually to the point that they're back to a quarter-empty club by the end of his show. That's what happened Thursday.

TNA's booking failed them once again. Fans tuned in at the start with hopes that weren't met. It was worse than usual, although diminishing ratings for a TNA Impact isn't rare. It's uncommon in television, but it's common in TNA. Yet nobody seems to learn from it. The same approach is taken over and over again. The same older talent is pushed, only recast as a heel instead of a face or vice-versa.

UFC's Ultimate Fighter program on the same network the night before also averaged 1.9 million viewers. It opened with a 1.28 and went up every quarter hour thereafter, to a 1.29, 1.35, and finally a 1.42.

UFC features young largely unknown fighters with two known veterans, a babyface George St. Pierre and a heel Josh Koscheck (who outright said he was going to play up his heel persona for the fans who hate him to help the drama of the show), and the young fighters interact and argue, cut promos on each other, and then battle it out inside a ring. The winner advances, the loser is gone. It's a simple formula, and it's built around personalities, conflict, and ramifications from the results of the fight.

TNA is built around arguments over backstage power grabs. It's focused on veterans in their 40s and 50s, making their case to be the stars of the show based on ratings that were drawn in the late-'90s (or in some cases, mere TV exposure with no track record of drawing ratings). It'd be like UFC presenting a TV show today built around the Dan Severn-Ken Shamrock-Kimo rivalry.

Spike TV sells ads based on their target demo of men 18-34 years old. With 1.9 million viewers for The Ultimate Fighter, the M18-34 demo drew a 2.2 rating. TNA, with the same average viewership of 1.9 million, drew a 1.0 rating in Spike's key demo.

TNA is failing to draw 18-34 year olds relative to UFC because they continue to focus on stars who peaked 10-15 years ago as draws and as performers. It feels like yesterday's news and not "cool" to an age group where the cool-factor is a major factor.

TNA can celebrate 1.9 million viewers. They should. But in the right context. It shows that when they put all of their resources toward bringing an audience to their show, they can increase that audience by 10-20 percent. What should deflate their celebration almost instantly, though, is their uncanny tendency to turn off that 10-20 percent quickly. In this case it took 120 minutes. After Jan. 4 and Mar. 5 when they had peak Monday ratings it took a few weeks.

TNA is good at boosting ratings every few months for one show. They're even better at turning them off to the product almost instantly.

Those are facts. Facts that are part of a pattern. A pattern that has become predictable. Who in TNA is going to stop insisting that what they prescribe to is the right philosophy? When, for the sake of the wrestlers sacrificing their bodies in the primes of their careers to try to earn a living and build a nest egg, will someone in TNA stop letting these booking mistakes keep happening over and over and over again?

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