SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s Impact Wrestling program surged to 344,000 viewers on Pop TV, a big jump over the 292,000 last week and the 292,000 average so far in 2017. This is encouraging, if not emboldening, for the new Impact management and creative regime. It’s the best viewership number since November 3 last year and the fourth time this year viewership topped 300,000.
Keller’s Analysis: The November average viewership, not counting the Thanksgiving episode, was 338,000. The average the previous four months was 326,000, 359,000, and 340,000. Last night’s number might be an indication that the viewership lost last December – when Impact went in some odd directions as it patched together “original” programming without fresh TV taping content to fill it, and had the turmoil of the ownership situation – has come back. This is just one week, though, and it could be a blip if the extra 50,000 people this week didn’t like what they saw, or Impact could build on this if viewers liked what they saw. The show was praised this week by both Mike McMahon in his Impact Report and Andrew Soucek in his Hits & Misses. Both also reviewed the show in-depth and spoke of the vast improvements this week compared to last week in their PWTorch Livecast Post-Impact Show right after the show ended.
Nice. There seems to be an interest in Alberto being on Impact Wrestling. His debut last week brought in huge numbers for Impact Wrestling’s YouTube page. Now this week with the huge increase in viewers.
I didn’t watch the show for Alberto. There were several additions to the show that probably popped ratings. ALberto’s was surely one of them, but not the main reason, nor the sole reason. As a wrestler, his act is pretty stale and boring.