Analysis: Dixie Carter hurting TNA ratings?

Those interminably long TNA Impact openings featuring Dixie Carter … they have to be bad for business, right? Maybe, maybe not.

Let’s look at the quarter-hour ratings for Impact this past week to try to figure this out. The first quarter-hour, 9-9:15 p.m. EST, had by far the highest rating of any quarter-hour in the two-hour show, a 1.27. The show’s overall rating was 1.11, and there was a quick drop from the first quarter-hour, which featured Carter, among others, and the second, which featured a lengthy Sting promo that rated 1.03.

It doesn’t seem to make much sense that we had to wait until quarter-hour three to get our first match of the evening, and that we had to squeeze 10 people into a five-on-five tag-team match after wasting a half-hour on poorly-scripted and even-more-poorly-acted promos in that third quarter-hour.

(Which pushed the rating up modestly to 1.07 from the previous quarter-hour.)

But then you consider that the highest-rated quarter-hour outside of the open was the final one with the Sting-Ethan Carter III main event, which drew a 1.14 rating.

Two takeaways from this:

• TNA fans prefer the drama to the wrestling. Not a good takeaway if you’re on the booking committee, there, is it? As god-awful as Dixie is at playing a wrestling heel, fans prefer that to the talent base actually working in the ring. Ugh
• TV viewers tune in, hoping to see something good, and are turned off by the nonsense at the top of the show, and don’t come back. This is the more likely takeaway. The long opens are bad for business because they take the focus away from where it needs to be.

Column by Chris Graham