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What's the story?
Impact Wrestling Officials are reportedly looking for a new home as their current deal with Pop TV expires on December 31st.
In case you didn't know...
Since July 21, 2016, Impact Wrestling has been airing on Pop TV. The company’s ratings have been on a gradual decline since leaving Spike TV back in 2014. During their time on Spike TV (which is now called Paramount Network), the average ratings were above 1.0 million viewers.
During the 2013-2014 time period, the company lost many valuable names such as Hulk Hogan, AJ Styles, TNA founder Jeff Jarrett, Sting, Chris Sabin, Christopher Daniels and Kazarian, along with TNA Hall of Famers Bully Ray and Devon.
When the promotion aired its final episode on Spike TV in November, their viewership average was at 0.8.
Impact moved to Destination America in 2015, which took a drastic hit on their average ratings mostly due to the network only airing approximately 57,238,000 American households back in 2015. The weekly viewership in ratings was now at a low 390,000 average.
The heart of the matter
Once the company came over to Pop TV back in 2016, the ratings continued the average of 300,000. The ratings in late 2018 took a noticeable decline of 215,000 viewers.
When football season kicked in, Impact’s ratings continued to fall and reports surfaced that Pop officials informed Impact that they were changing their time slot of 8pm to 10pm in late October. There’s still no word on why Pop management decided to make this abrupt change.
On its first week in the 10pm timeslot, the show drew 98,000 viewers – the lowest in company history. The following week rebounded a bit with 105,000 viewers, but is still the second lowest viewership in company history.
The forced change to 10pm was seen as a major step backwards in the Impact and Pop relationship.
What’s Next?
With their contracts expiring on Pop TV at the end of December, the chances of the network renewing Impact seem pretty slim due to Pop officials taking Impact off the prime-time slot. The relationship between Pop and Impact Wrestling officials is reportedly strained. As mentioned above, there’s no word on where Impact could go next but company officials hope to have a new deal set for 2019.
