TNA ratings for Oct. 20 episode: Impact Wrestling draws average of two million viewers on Spike TV

The ratings are in for last night's (Oct. 20) episode of TNA Impact Wrestling and seeing as it was the first show since the events of Bound for Glory, it was sure to pop a decent rating.

As PWTorch reports, that's exactly what happened:

TNA Impact Wrestling on Thursday, October 20 scored a 1.35 rating off a first hour 1.38 rating and second hour 1.33 rating. It was the second-highest rating of the year behind March 3 when Sting returned to TNA.

Last year's post-Bound for Glory episode scored a 1.41 overall rating off a first hour 1.47 rating and second hour 1.35 rating. Although the 2011 second hour rating was lower, there wasn't as much of a drop-off from the first to second hour as last year.

-- This year's show averaged 2.0 million viewers compared to 1.9 million viewers last year. Peak viewership during Impact was 2.2 million viewers during the fourth quarter-hour, which was the Knockouts tag match segment.

This is all great news but it's important to remember that any show after a pay-per-view is going to draw decent ratings because fans are curious to see the fallout of said pay-per-view. This is especially true in the case of TNA because no one is actually bothering to purchase its shows.

The bad news here is the quarter-hour ratings show exactly which segment was the lowest rated of the entire show and that turned out to be the main event, which features Kurt Angle dropping the heavyweight title to James Storm in a very short match.

The obvious note to make here is that one great rating does not signify a turnaround for business. The general creative direction of TNA has improved mightily over the past few months but there's still a long ways to go.

Can they keep the momentum? We shall see.