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Dixie Carter comments on Impact's ratings
Posted by Mark Virginia on 04/13/2010 at 05:09 PM
TNA President Dixie Carter is now answering fan questions are here are a few regarding ratings...
Gabe Ross, Athens, OH - Q: Ratings are a big deal for any company. What are your short and long-term goals in terms of ratings for TNA?
A: Good question. I want to be very clear on this, we NEVER expected to have competitive ratings with RAW at the beginning. I have been very specific in saying that our goal was to grow our brand and our ratings and we felt like we could do that faster on Mondays. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a big step forward. We expected to have to rebuild part of our audience when moving our programming day and timeslot. We have finally settled in to an 8 pm ET/7 pm CT Monday timeslot with an encore presentation on Thursdays as 9 pm ET. It is going to take some time to build both audiences. We have no ego in saying iMPACT! has to draw a big rating in one night. With the encore, we have grown our overall viewing audience significantly from 2009 averages. We have 4 hours of exposure in prime time on Spike TV. So short term, we have settled in to a new programming schedule and need to give both some time to grow, but are happy with our increased viewership. Long term we want to see the overall ratings for iMPACT! increase significantly, no matter how many airings we have.
Jared in NYC - Q: The move to Mondays looks like a failure when youre changing the timeslot a month later? Thoughts?
A: We discussed both the 8 10 pm ET and 7-9 pm ET timeslots with Spike before we moved to Mondays. It would be a failure to stay in a timeslot when you think another one might offer a greater chance for growth. When we started iMPACT! at 8 pm ET for the 3-hour January 4th special and on April 5th when we moved an hour earlier to get a jump on the NCAA Mens basketball championship game, we saw higher viewership. Instead of moving back to 9 pm the following week, we decided to leave the start time at 8 pm ET and build that timeslot. Now its up to TNA, Spike and all of you to spread the word.
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