Impact! (stylized as IMPACT!), also known as IMPACT! on AXS TV, is an American professional wrestling television program produced by the American promotion Impact Wrestling (formerly known as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA)) that debuted on June 4, 2004. The series currently airs on AXS TV in the United States, owned by parent company Anthem Sports & Entertainment.
History
Fox Sports Net and Webcasts (2004–2005) In May 2004, TNA announced that they had negotiated a television deal with Fox Sports Net (FSN) where they would get a one-hour timeslot on Fridays in most markets, putting TNA on unrestricted cable and satellite for the first time. TNA began taping a new weekly series that month, TNA Impact!, with the first episode premiering on June 4, 2004.
After 51 shows TNA's contract with FSN expired in May 2005 and was not renegotiated, with the last episode of Impact! airing on May 27, 2005. Impact! continued to air on certain regional networks in place of Xplosion. On July 1, TNA began offering new episodes through their website, first using BitTorrent downloads, then by streaming through RealPlayer. To save on production costs, four hours of the show were recorded in a day and made available throughout the subsequent month.
The Spike TV era (2005–2014)
Seeking a more profitable television outlet, TNA negotiated a Saturday night timeslot with Spike TV (now known as the Paramount Network), which had recently lost WWE Raw back to USA Network. Spike started airing Impact! on October 1, 2005, five days after the departure of Raw. Two episodes were taped every other Tuesday, airing them on the subsequent Saturday. TNA's syndication contracts for the show on local television channels, from after the FSN contract, were converted to contracts for their syndicated show, TNA Xplosion. They were no longer paying for the timeslot, though Spike controlled their advertising revenue. Because of viewership growth, Impact! was moved to Thursdays in April 2006, and later to an earlier primetime slot in November. At this time tapings were moved from Tuesdays to Mondays. In June 2006, episodes became available at the iTunes Store, though they have since been removed.
Expansion to two hours (2007–2010) Due to further viewership growth, Impact! was expanded to two hours on October 4, 2007, still starting at the same time of 9:00 p.m. On January 17, 2008, Spike presented an event entitled "Global Impact!", which featured TNA wrestlers in matches against talents from New Japan Pro-Wrestling and on March 27, 2008, Impact! aired live for the first time in the show's history in its regular timeslot. Announced in a release on TNAwrestling.com on April 2, 2008, TNA came to terms on a deal that had the show airing in Australia starting April 5. Up until then, they had only broadcast their monthly pay-per-view events on Main Event in Australia. The contract expired in March 2011 and was not renewed, however, in May 2011, the show was picked up by Australian Network FuelTV, which began airing it every Saturday at 8:30 p.m. AEST, starting on June 11. On October 23, 2008, TNA aired its first Impact! filmed outside the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida. It was broadcast from The Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. TNA also made the transition to HD for this broadcast and announced that all future episodes would be broadcast in High Definition.
Move to Mondays (2010)
On January 4, 2010, the show went head-to-head for the first time with TNA's rival-promotion WWE's flagship show Raw. This would be the first time since March 2001 that two major wrestling promotions went head-to-head in a Monday night television ratings competition. TNA advertised the debut of Hulk Hogan and his return to professional wrestling, while WWE promoted the return of Bret Hart to Raw, who last made an appearance in November 1997 before the Montreal Screwjob. On this night, Impact! was watched by more than 3 million viewers for the opening hour, towards the end of the show, the viewership declined to 2.2 million viewers, this was the highest viewership in the show's history; Raw was watched by 5.6 million viewers, the most since August 2009.
