Some people must be on a decent wage. Provided they get their wages of course

Its worth skipping to the end of that Russo video just so you can hear the absurd storyline pitch he gave while he was secretly working for TNA - he wanted to bring in other wrestling companies and have them all feud with TNA for the Spike timeslot. Never let it be said that Vince Russo is an unoriginal hack stuck in the past...

I can't watch the video because I'll want to kill him but please tell me that's not true. I'd like to hold the tinest amount or respect for the grade A moron

Drew Galloway and others spinning the roh deal as a positive for tna on twitter. Hmm.

Oh no its true.

In other news

Reports now that Dixie Carter has apparently told talent in the TNA conference call that she can't/won't address the Destination America situation. The mind boggles.

I'd like to say I don't believe it. Although she probably called them all dummies thinking the call had already disconnected

Its difficult to see this as an especially positive thing for TNA.

I suppose the argument can be made that this is Destination America doubling down on wrestling and that adding a second promotion and third hour of wrestling potentially draws more eyes to the network and helps inflate the Impact numbers. I'm not entirely convinced that line of thinking works and it comes packaged with a lot of potentially huge problems for TNA. The biggest and most obvious one is that the RoH shows are going to be a lot cheaper for Destination America than the TNA shows are. This is potentially a huge issue for TNA if RoH performs well. If it can match (or even out perform) Impact's numbers then Destination America is going to be in a position where it can achieve similar (if not better) results for a smaller cost which is going to make it very hard for TNA to justify their existence. Of course the flipside to that is that RoH could bomb horribly which would help TNA (assuming they can hold steady or grow).

With that said the really negative side to all of this from TNA's perspective I'd have thought is this – Destination America have been cutting back on TNA produced content left, right and centre and now they've just brought in some RoH shows. That would rather suggest that the problem was specifically with the TNA content and not with it being wrestling. They're willing to have additional hours of wrestling on the network they apparently just don't want it to be TNA.

The other interesting thing is Ring of Honor could now be strongly argued are the number 2 wrestling brand in America. They now have better tv than TNA, can draw paying audiences- all be it in 1500 seat rooms- and have a more respected product.

Pointed out elsewhere but DA might think a wrestling brand called Ring of Honor has more potential than Tits N' Arse wrestling.

If they're not going to address the Destination America rumours/situation then you do have to wonder what the point of the conference call was. Clearly that's what the talent will want to know about at this point particularly since the call was seemingly put together as a result of the RoH/DA deal being announced. Its just bizarre that they wouldn't talk about it and it adds yet more fuel to the fire that things aren't looking great. I mean if Destination America were committed to keeping TNA then why wouldn't she be able to say so?

It's a bizarre situation all around. The fact Destination America have chosen to announce ROH and not defend their #1 rating show at the same time is bizzare and as you say, what exactly was the point of the call

This is certainly true. I still cannot for the life of me understand why they didn't just completely rebrand as Impact Wrestling when they moved to Destination America. They can't seriously think the TNA branding is worth anything at this point and the rebrand would have helped push the whole new direction relaunch thing.

It will all come down to audiences. From what i have heard Ring Of Honor is a very wrestling heavy show. It will depend on how many people are willing to sit and watch it for the hour it is on, it will just be a repeat from the weekend shows so hopefully their hardcore fanbase will watch it not only at the weekend but on the Wednesday too to get the numbers up.

Whether you like TNA or not they did bring some of their fanbase with them to Desination America and are the top show on there.


And to think you all thought the dirtsheets were right lol. What was it they said? oooooh wrestling is hard to sell to advertisers ahahahahahah.


Oh yeah lets buy more then! Always good to see Meltzer made a fool of. I thought my big laugh this week was Chris Jericho crying hard in front of the world at being hacked twice in one day. This tops it. Always love seeing the dirtsheets getting proved wrong again.

Well excuse me Mr 'Wrestling has been dead for 15 years and nobody wants to touch it'.

This from Jim Ross (posted yesterday I believe)

TNA not addressing the rampant TV rumors of their relationship with Destination America is irresponsible. I've talked to many within the company who have no idea what their future holds and that's not good business. Silence speaks volumes more often than not in the wrestling business when it comes to communicating with talent and of that I speak from extensive experience.
Link


Of course the key ingredient you miss here is that the RoH content is cheaper than TNA thus requires less advertising revenue to make it a profitable venture for Destination America. So if you were having trouble selling advertisers on pro-wrestling but quite liked the numbers it was bringing in this is the exact kind of route you'd want to take. Keep pro-wrestling but reduce the cost of doing so. Also worth remembering that the RoH product is very different to the TNA product and much more easily marketed in the sporting vein which potentially helps appease advertisers a little from a PR perspective.

Best worker in the history of the business brother.

Also, Dixie Carter called a talent meeting to specifically tell them all that she wasn't going to tell them anything?

Dixie once did a youshoot interview that was 90 minutes long and she didn't answer any of the questions, just gave vague positive statements about TNA.

Meltzer posted the exact wording of the memo from Discovery to it's ad sales dept. he saw-


From www.f4wonline.com

Which came across as very disapointing. The hype for it sounded great but it lacked quality. I preferred the Russo live shoot.

That "memo" reads as if it was someone writing an angle because it fits the storyline perfectly. One thing I will agree with Russo on is that why would DA go out and sign another wrestling show if advertisers are allegedly refusing to advertise with the one they already have ?

I doubt advertisers are refusing to pay for slots, I imagine it's just not as high revenue as they'd have hoped for.

The other reason could be ROH is already cheaper to buy I imagine but the cost would have been further reduced because it's second run rights. ROH will keep its existing TV deal, which in most of the markets it's ran in is in a late night weekend slot, and then be replayed on Wednesdays.

Ah ha! So DA are basically replacing TNA with a cheaper wrestling option.

On the plus side, that's better for wrestling fans than them dropping wrestling entirely, as Spike appear to have done.

On the negative side, it confirms the problem with wrestling ad revenue. DA are determined to have wrestling because it fits the channel's ultra-lowbrow redneck ethos. But it turns out wrestling is seen as *so* lowbrow by advertisers, that only very, very cheap wrestling (RoH reruns, seriously?) is even economically viable for them. Well, it's something I guess!

Because, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, the new wrestling show is considerably cheaper then TNA and thus requires much less advertising revenue to be a profitable venture for Destination America. The real issue here isn't that they've signed a deal with RoH but whether or not they intend to continue with TNA.

This won't be why Destination America want to stick with wrestling. The reasons behind it are likely similar to the reason USA views WWE programming as so important and why Spike (or then TNN) was interested in WWE and then TNA. Wrestling shows help inflate the network average across the year at a relatively low price point. With Destination America I suppose the issue will be whether they want to make a long term investment in pro-wrestling (as USA have) or whether they view pro-wrestling as a quick and effective way to grow the network and once they've done that and have a stronger foothold with other content will move on.

Meanwhile

I've just been reading that Dixie Carter has been taping a pilot for a reality series. I'm not even sure where to begin with that. But apparently the belief is that if she's shopping a reality series with her as the star it maybe means the Carters will be willing to prop up TNA as the pitch for the series will reportedly be focusing on a woman running a wrestling company (a male dominated industry).

We always knew this was gonna happen!

TNA stopped been relevant when spike dropped em!

As for RoH who really gives a toss?

(Get the 2 Bobbies and Aries on NXT!)