Guest Hosts on Impact?

[It's Damn Real!]

No it didn't. http://www.gerweck.net/ratings.htm The first half of this year, RAW ratings never went below 3.23 and hit 4.1 for the last two weeks of February. The Donald Trump Show did a 4.5, but since then the ratings have topped out at 3.95 and bottomed at 3.1.

The numbers say that Guest Hosts haven't had a huge effect in WWE. And, as limited as the appeal of some WWE hosts have been (Bob Barker and Jeremy Piven have, shall we say, selective appeal to widely different fanbases), TNA hosts would be a whole other level of D-List. And TNA couldn't even fill the gaps with a huge roster of Legends eager to keep their standing alive. Think Jim Neidhart vs Ricky Steamboat.

Ah OK, 3.1 was the marker, then.

Either way, the entire idea was centered around increasing the ratings, which Vince still felt (according to everything I had read at the time) were too small for his flagship program. Some weeks worked, others didn't.

The initial response was good, they were hitting 3.5+ for the weeks following the Trump episode, and only until about the first week of September did they start dropping again.

Either way, I just don't think TNA could do this to the point that it'd matter. It would hurt them, IMO, because they'd be catering again to the bible belt, and not the national audience (like they should), so we'd be seeing low-rent D and Z-list celebrity showings like Super Dave, NASCAAR drivers and maybe the occasional baseball player or two. Certainly nothing at the level of what the WWE is able to bring in at any time.