Josh Mathews Comments On Impact's Sharp Drop In Ratings Following PopTV Time Slot Change

As noted, Impact Wrestling has a new time slot on Pop TV and viewership was down last week. Wrestling Inc. managing editor Nick Hausman was recently on a media call with Impact producer Josh Mathews and asked whether their are talks of moving Impact back to its original time slot.

With Impact now at 10 pm on Thursday, viewership hit a record low, falling below 100,000 viewers. Mathews said the overnight number is much less important than the number the show does for its target demographic. He said they weren't surprised by the drop in viewership.

"Everyone gets so caught up in these overnight [numbers]. No, I haven't even looked over at the DVR numbers yet, but the most important number that everyone needs to really start honing in on is what our key demo is, and what that number is, more-so than the overnights," Mathews said. "I mean, yeah, we expected a drop. To see a drop like we saw wasn't a surprise, it was, 'OK, this is what 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock looks like.' But it's that key demo number."

Mathews said with the current landscape of television, most people don't watch their shows during their original air times. People, like Mathews, are more likely to DVR their shows and watch when they have the time.

"I don't know what night of the week my favorite shows are on, because I watch everything on Hulu and I watch everything on Netflix," he said. "At this point, I'm 38 with a kid, so we don't have the luxury of sitting down when our shows are on, we watch them when we can. So I think in 2018, that's the way people have to watch Impact."

Mathews said there have been no talks of moving Impact back to its previous time slot. He said the company is not overreacting to a one-week result because the executives are aware that they were going to be faced with this issue when they changed the time.

"10 p.m. every Thursday from here to the rest of the year and so on, that's what our time slot looks like. There hasn't been any talk of changing that based on one week from last week," he said. "And also, whenever a show changes, any show, even if it changes from seven to eight or eight to nine or backwards, you're gonna see a drop because of the trending way people watch their shows. They forget, they don't update their DVR, and that number is always affected. When I was (in WWE) SmackDown switched three or four times, and that first week always took a big hit."