Tonight on Spike TV, TNA’s weekly programming expands to 3 hours with the addition of the 1-hour “Impact Rewind” pre-show that will air at 7pm (ET), prior to Impact.
“Impact Rewind” originally started off as a post-game show and was the creation of Eric Bischoff and Jason Harvey. Despite critical acclaim, the show was cancelled after a few months due to low ratings. Now the show returns as a lead-in show for Impact with the hope that fans will get conditioned to tuning in earlier and the beginning of Impact at 8pm (ET) will have a solid wrestling lead-in.
Impact moving to 8pm in May was done to help offset the eventual competition from the NFL, which returns in the coming weeks.
One challenge facing Rewind is that it won’t have the benefit of airing right after Impact and the occasional Impact main event that ran long and into the Rewind timeslot, helping boost Rewind ratings.
The show that used to air before Impact, World’s Worst Tenants, drew approximately 650,000 viewers. Since networks typically have a harder time selling advertising during wrestling shows, the feeling is that TNA will have to produce higher ratings than “Worst Tenants.”
Coincidentally, TNA expanding it’s weekly programming to 3-hours comes just 11 days before WWE RAW does the same thing on July 23rd.
(Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter)