Source: TNAStars.com and TV By the Numbers

The final cable rating and viewership estimates for this week’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling on Spike TV are now available. The numbers tell us that this week’s episode of the show was not only the most viewed episode of iMPACT Wrestling in 2012, but that there was a strong ratings increase associated with that high viewership figure. In addition, this week’s final cable rating number is the highest since the February 2, 2012 show, which featured a packed arena in London. It appears that when they’re not competing with the entire world through the Olympics or getting a portion of their fans cut out of the final numbers because of contract disputes, iMPACT Wrestling can achieve some pretty substantial viewership! This week’s episode of iMPACT Wrestling scored a final cable rating of 1.15 which represented about 1,717,000 viewers over the course of the show’s two hours.

By comparison, this week’s episode had a final cable rating that is 0.09 of a point higher and brought in approximately 261,000 more viewers than last week’s episode, which scored a final cable rating of 1.06 with an average audience of 1,456,000 viewers.

The total viewership for any one episode of TNA’s iMPACT Wrestling is hard to estimate. On his Twitter account, Eric Bischoff suggests that DVR numbers can add a total of 10% to 12% to the final viewership numbers. Historically, we’ve seen DVR+1 and DVR+3 figures (the amount of people who watch the show on their DVR within one day and three days of recording it) add 200,000 more viewers to the final viewership number reported above. Plus, Spike.com uploads each full episode of iMPACT Wrestling to its website for free online streaming for a four month period. The online streaming versions of the show typically generate about 20,000 views before they are taken down (some episodes have many more viewers, others have less). Also, the TNA channel on YouTube posts a large portion of each episode online with seemingly no date noted as to when they will be removed. However, there is no way to know whether or not DVR or online viewers are part of the original viewership estimate, so these figures are rarely reported by professional wrestling websites. However, in the interest of providing a definition for the full spectrum of “viewers” for each episode we feel this information is still good to know!

Interested in learning more about how iMPACT Wrestling’s historical ratings and viewership numbers? If so, then check out TNAStars.com’s Ratings War area. In the Ratings War area you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling vs. Monday Night RAW from the spring of 2010 and iMPACT Wrestling vs. Superstars from all of 2010 and the first part of 2011. Also, you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling’s viewership numbers from week-to-week in 2011 and the beginning of the ratings and viewership tracking information for 2012. Enjoy!