Pop TV President On Why They Dropped Impact Wrestling, Interesting Claim On Weekly Impact Viewership

Pop TV President Brad Schwartz recently spoke with Deadline.com and talked about why the network dropped Impact Wrestling. Schwartz revealed that Impact was one of their 10 highest-rated shows.

Schwartz said Impact wanted to keep airing on the network, but the network wanted to start focusing on brand and expectation.

"Yes, we had a wrestling show every Thursday night, which by the way was one of our 10 highest-rated shows on the network. They wanted to keep going, obviously. It was two hours of original content every Thursday night, 52 weeks a year that would do 400 thousand-500 thousand viewers every Thursday night. We had to really start focusing on brand and expectation, and I think if you're going to pitch yourself and tell audiences that you're this place for premium content, Schitt's Creek, Flack, Florida Girls, this type of stuff, then people need to know what to expect from you when they come to the channel," Schwartz said.

The comments made by Schwartz indicates that the network would not be interested in airing any programming from other wrestling promotions. There was speculation on the AroLucha promotion coming to Pop and we know that the Capitol Wrestling promotion reached out to Pop in December.

It's interesting that Schwartz claimed Impact would draw 400,000 – 500,000 viewers every Thursday night when the show never came close to regularly drawing those numbers. It's possible he was including DVR totals and app streams. The final episode of Impact on Pop drew just 151,000 viewers. Impact averaged 250,154 viewers per episode in 2018 and 311,000 viewers per episode in 2017. The show averaged 311,000 viewers per episode in 2016 and 327,000 in 2015. The first Pop episode aired on January 5, 2016.