These are the quotes from the article that stood out to me:
"The average viewership of 938,000 made it the most-watched show in the promotion's four-year history, though it lost nearly half of its audience that was delivered by TNA Impact Wrestling."
"It had a strong lead-in from TNA Impact Wrestling, which averaged 1.82 million viewers, and failed to keep it."
Apparently, there is a problem in the world of Spike prime time. After having a huge amount of faith in the new Bellator show and giving it an excellent lead-in via, "IMPACT WRESTLING" (Spike's highest rated program, Bellator failed to maintain the viewership that TNA delivered them. Losing viewership is never a good thing. This is a problem that could easily be resolved however. TNA brings Spike ratings that the network is very satisfied with, and instead of losing ratings momentum at 10pm, they should keep it going by giving TNA a third hour.
It wouldn't be the first time. In 2010, "Reaction" was briefly added to Spike's Thursday night programming. Last year, Spike briefly added, "Rewind". Neither program was given much time to prove their worth, despite the fact that TNA has been a valuable asset to Spike for years. In fact, looking at TNA's past performances in the 10pm time slot shows that a third hour of TNA would be beneficial to the network- when TNA was in the 9pm-11pm time slot, they usually scored a higher rating during the 10pm-11pm time period.
TNA obviously has the resources and interest in giving Spike an additional hour, now it's up to Spike to utilize that. Although Bellator does have a place on Spike (their 1/17 program did have an average viewership of 938,000), TNA has proven that Thursday nights on the network belong to them.
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