Love 'em or Hate 'em TNA's move was a "Good Move"

[6-String King]

You can love TNA. You can hate TNA. But you can't deny that their decision to move to Monday Nights and declare war is in fact a good move. Even the TNA Haters have something to benefit from this. That being the fact that WWE will have to step it up a notch. Competition is always good for the consumer. In my opinion WWE has been getting stale. Everybody talks about how much we all wish the Attitude Era could come back. If TNA can even come close to battling head-to-head with WWE in ratings. Maybe WWE will move away from this PG crap that got going on now.

For the record, I'm not a Fanboy of either organization. I'm a fanboy of wrestling in general. WWE just needs to quit being a bunch of fucking pussies with their Walt Disney Wrestling.

[Kalyx triaD]

I can't imagine who had a problem with it. Who are you talking to?

[Shadrick]

Yeah I thought everyone felt this way...

[6-String King]

Seems to be a few in here that are anti-TNA.

[VSG]

Anti-TNA is not the same as Anti-Monday Night Competition (Note that I will not use "War" here)

3.4 vs 0.98?? C'mon!

[Supreme Olajuwon]

I'm not anti-TNA, I'm anti-shitty programming. If this improves the quality of the shows (which were often terrible on Thursdays) then I fully support the move.

[Xero]

For the record, I'm not a Fanboy of either organization. I'm a fanboy of wrestling in general. WWE just needs to quit being a bunch of fucking pussies with their Walt Disney Wrestling.

And TNA needs to stop booking Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling II.

Seriously, I don't hate TNA, they have an awesome roster. It's the higher ups who are ruining the product for me. There are some pluses but it seems that for every step forward TNA goes 10 steps back.

I'm STILL butt-hurt over Daniels jobbing to Val Fucking Venis. How about the Nasties being there? How do you fuck up RVD's debut like that? Or how about Hogan being the center of attention? That last one is the worst and it shows in both this week's show and next week's.

[Xero]

For the record, I'm not a Fanboy of either organization. I'm a fanboy of wrestling in general. WWE just needs to quit being a bunch of fucking pussies with their Walt Disney Wrestling.

Also, you're contradicting yourself. Do you have anything nice to say about WWE? Because there are a lot of pluses in WWE. I'm not saying it's perfect, but to completely ignore the good they're doing is ridiculous.

[Londoner]

And TNA needs to stop booking Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling II.

Seriously, I don't hate TNA, they have an awesome roster. It's the higher ups who are ruining the product for me. There are some pluses but it seems that for every step forward TNA goes 10 steps back.

I'm STILL butt-hurt over Daniels jobbing to Val Fucking Venis. How about the Nasties being there? Or Hogan being the center of attention? That last one is the worst and it shows in both this week's show and next week's.

100% agreed.

[Team Sheep]

How hard is it for people to understand that WWE have gone PG because that's where the money is. Do you realise how much money guys like Cena and DX make through kids? It's pretty straight forward, that's the demographic they're targeting because that's where the money will be for the next 10 years. It's not hard to get. WWE don't do it to spite you, it's just business.

Now I wish everyone would stop bitching about 'this PG crap'.

[Xero]

This is a lot like the NWA and other territories vs the WWF in the 80s. The NWA had the more mature product and WWF had the more family-friendly programming. And WWF was the more popular one there, despite the NWA having better wrestling and better storylines.

PG is better for business. And to me, if the in-ring product is good and there are good storylines (I'm not saying there are or aren't currently) I don't need swearing, sexual innuendo and blood to enjoy the product.

[Xero]

Also, the move to Monday Nights would have been fine if they weren't going completely head-to-head. That's where they fucked up.

[TheAdamEvansFan]

I was at TNA IMPACT 3/8/2010. I was in the corner on RingSide.. even got blood on my face from the hogan/flair beating on the outside.. The problem with TNA is that they used a small arena, which turns off long time wrestling fans who want a big soldout arena. But, if you can't fill the seats, then why get a big arena? So it's like a waiting game as the hype and energy builds... We are waiting on more experienced and current talent to defect from WWE, question is, if they will come to the smaller arena to get more air time and be involved in the X Division. I think people like Rey Mysterio would benefit in the X Division but if we continue to use Arena's like Stage 21 at Universal, then there is no way he or others will be coming over most likely. Again.. TNA definetly has the new fresh smell and hype as WCW did back in the day as the underdog.. I was never a TNA fan, and I love the move to Monday Nights.. I predict that Smackdown will move to thursday nights now. We will need to be patient with TNA as it builds it's company on the new found energy and media hype.

[TheAdamEvansFan]

Yeah I agree, they need to move to 8 est. That was the plus with WCW... The male demographic is ready to watch wrestling at 8 est 7 ct, when the chick flick drama shows are beginning... Move it up.

[TheAdamEvansFan]

Using hogan n flair to bring in the hype and old fans is perfect. I was astonished by the excitement in the crowd..HOWEVER.. These guys are old, out of shape, and bald... Put over the younger talent and if you have to wrestle cool, but DON'T wrestle more than the younger guys.. If it's a tag team, you should be letting the youngins wrestle while your hyping their presence on the outside or bouncing around on the outside.

[Innovator]

I really thought the move was MAKE IT OR BREAK IT

[Kane Knight]

Seriously, all I have to say is the notion that this forces competition is retarded.

WWE doesn't need to step up. TNA needs to step up. They're the contender, WWE is the big dog. The Monday Night Wars didn't even really start this way, so I'm not sure why MNW ver 2 would have to.

That being said, I want TNA to get to the point where they're viable competition. I'm betting WWE still has more than three times the viewership though. That's not a move that will make them sweat anything.

[BigDaddyCool]

TNA is fighting WWE the way an baby can fight Brock Lesnar.

[BigDaddyCool]

Also, what is this fan boy shit? Only fan boys care if they are called fan boys.

[Swiss Ultimate]

I don't want the Attitude Era to come back. I want to see some progress damn it!

Why do we have to rehash old gimmicks a billion times when we have fresh new faces, young characters with potential...

[Mr Amazing]

TNA moving to mondays was a good move But it was bad timing

[The Pope]

Yeah, what Mr. Amazing said

[Xero]

I don't want the Attitude Era to come back. I want to see some progress damn it!

Why do we have to rehash old gimmicks a billion times when we have fresh new faces, young characters with potential...

Because no one in that company in charge gets that they could actually get over by being different.

[Kane Knight]

TNA is fighting WWE the way an baby can fight Brock Lesnar.

That's not quite fair. TNA is more like a 5 year old with Downs Syndrome.

TNA moving to mondays was a good move But it was bad timing

There may never be good timing for TNA, but doing it during "wrestlemania season" is certainly a bad choice.

[Theo Dious]

Seriously, all I have to say is the notion that this forces competition is retarded.

WWE doesn't need to step up. TNA needs to step up. They're the contender, WWE is the big dog. The Monday Night Wars didn't even really start this way, so I'm not sure why MNW ver 2 would have to.

It's champion's advantage really. TNA has to take it to WWE. WWE does not have to take anything to TNA.

[Theo Dious]

There may never be good timing for TNA, but doing it during "wrestlemania season" is certainly a bad choice.

The only viable reason I can see for doing this during "WM season" is that when the post-Wrestlemania lull sets in, TNA will already have its "new tone" established.

[Arnold HamNegger]

The only viable reason I can see for doing this during "WM season" is that when the post-Wrestlemania lull sets in, TNA will already have its "new tone" established.

Well if you're gonna try and get some attention, why not do it during the peak of interest in the wrestling industry.

I mean, if you're gonna bang a fat chick, you might as well do it in the parking lot of the Porn Convention in Vegas. No matter how disgusting it may be, someone's gonna pay attention and just might buy it.

[thecc]

I think Bryan Alvarez said it best

Regardless of the spin, the number is awful when you take into account that not only was it the first Hogan vs. Flair match in ten years, but Flair's first match since coming out of retirement and Hogan's first match since facing Randy Orton in WWE years back. TNA made the decision to put the match on TV as opposed to PPV because they thought it would be a game changer, the kind of match that would establish them on Monday nights. There was absolutely no chance of that happening and I argued strongly that they should have built it up and at least tried to do a number on PPV. The reality is that everyone was wrong in the sense that it wouldn't have meant a thing on PPV and it didn't mean a thing on TV, and part of that is because the writing crew is so inept that on the go-home show this past Thursday night they had the babyfaces beat up and bloody the heels, particularly Flair who was bleeding a gusher, which left viewers with absolutely no reason to want to see the match. Realistically, if given more time to build it up for PPV they'd have screwed it up even worse. TNA's mindset was that if they showed Flair bleeding really bad, fans would tune in thinking, I don't know, that if they saw all that blood on Thursday, imagine what they would see on Monday. It's pretty much the most elementary booking mistake that you can make, although that shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed TNA for the last eight years.

I don't even have the energy to write about why TNA has been the biggest failure of this generation, largely because I've been writing about it every single week in the Impact report for years now. The story of TNA is the story of a group of people who never learn a thing. They never learn a thing from their failures, and more astoundingly they never learn a thing from their few successes. They're run by a woman who has no idea what she's doing and the TV has been written for years by a guy who has no idea what he's doing. It's the classic story of doing the same thing over and over and over again and hoping that somehow things will change. Vince Russo needs to be fired immediately and never go anywhere near a wrestling promotion ever again. I would say he's the single biggest reason this company is in the shape it's in, but the reality is that Dixie Carter is the one who hired him and has kept him employed through one failure after another, so ultimately she's the one to blame. I can understand getting into the wrestling business in the mid 2000s and having limited understanding of its history, but one would think a wise business person would surround themselves with people who know more than they do. And even if you make a mistake and initially surround yourself with people who don't know what they're doing, which Dixie did, you'd think that when it became crystal clear that these people didn't know what they were doing you'd get rid of them and give other people a chance. People can make all the excuses they want, but the reason TNA is in the state it's in is so simple that I think the simplicity blinds people. When you hire everyone responsible for the death of WCW, from the bookers to the production guys to the top stars, why would you possibly think that the result is going to be any different this time around?

It's not 1998 anymore. What is astounding is that 1998 was the year that everything that made WCW a short-term success began to stop working. Vince Russo did massive damage to WCW during his first run and then in his second run he killed the place absolutely dead. He was brought into TNA secretly at the very beginning by Jerry Jarrett as a favor to Jeff Jarrett, and his writing, combined with a disastrous business plan, had the Jarretts preparing to throw in the towel three months later when Dixie stepped in and said her father might be willing to buy the company. TNA has lost tens of millions of dollars over the past eight years but survives to this day because they found a backer willing to keep them afloat as they lost money hand-over-fist with an ineptly-booked product, and somehow that has led the people in charge to think that they've beaten all the odds and achieved some level of success. Never mind that the normal barometer of business success, making money, has continually eluded them.

In the end, moving to Monday nights may be the biggest mistake TNA ever made. For all the talk about how this is a move that has to be made, the reality is that it's not. They did very well on January 4th, drawing their highest ratings ever, but they didn't take advantage of what momentum they had and by the time March 8th rolled around the booking of the TV show was such that they were actually less popular than they'd been before January 4th. In fact, they were more popular at this time last year than they are now, and that's with the additions of Hogan, Flair, Bischoff, Kennedy, Hall, Waltman and all the rest. Once again it all comes back to the horribly-written Russo television, which continually manages to take positives for TNA and turn them into negatives. It's a pattern impossible to miss. TNA gains momentum by bringing in a Kurt Angle or a Mick Foley or a Jeff Hardy or a Hulk Hogan or a Ric Flair, they see a jump in interest and perhaps increased ratings, and then Russo writes a bunch of shit for them that results in them becoming just another guy on TV, causing the ratings and interest level to drop back either to previous levels or to levels below the previous lows. The March 8th rating is a perfect illustration of that.

Why did TNA need to go to Monday nights head-to-head with Raw? As noted months back, the similarities between TNA in 2010 and WCW in 1995 are approximately zero. WCW and WWF ratings were within a half point of each other when WCW moved to Monday nights. WWE in 2010 does THREE TIMES the ratings TNA does on Thursdays. WCW in 1995 had the money and resources to raid WWF, which at the time was having severe financial problems. WWE in 2010 made over $500 million last year while TNA scratches to break even and is backed by a company with $14 million (million, not billion) in annual revenues. It's not even bringing a knife to a gun fight. A gun can at least run out of bullets. It's basically jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

Smackdown used to do more viewers than Raw on Thursday nights. Read that line again. Meanwhile, last Thursday's Impact didn't even draw more viewers than NXT. In fact, Dixie kept talking about how they beat ECW and now their goal was to do better ratings than Smackdown. Smackdown today, on a network no one watches on a night when no one watches TV, still does nearly 3.5 million viewers. Thursday night in prime time was the PERFECT night for TNA, and if they had any idea what they were doing there is no reason they shouldn't be doing 2 million viewers regularly at this point. But because it's one stupid thing after another they're stuck at the same old 1.5 million viewers that they've been doing forever, and they somehow came to the idiotic conclusion that the ONLY way to grow was to go head-to-head with Raw.

The thought process of the people in this company is astounding. Rather than waste any more time giving previous examples, let's look at the numbers for Monday night, which do a fine job providing examples on their own. A good primer would be to read the Thursday night Impact report later in this issue, which will tell you everything you need to know about how clueless these people are.

So there was one match announced for the March 8th show, Hogan & Abyss vs. Flair & AJ. As noted in the Impact report, they built this match up by having the babyfaces beat up and get revenge on the heels. This left fans with absolutely no reason to need to see the match. It ended up drawing a 1.01 rating going head-to-head with John Cena vs. Vince McMahon and a Cast of Characters which included both Mark Henry and Jack Swagger, a segment that did a 3.98 rating for WWE. So yes, essentially Vince and Cena beat Hogan and Flair 4.0 to 1.0.

TNA posted two videos on Youtube this weekend to hype up the show. They had one where Jeremy Borash got a message on his cell phone that there would be a big surprise in the first five minutes of the show and he had to keep this a secret (because, of course, promoting what you're going to do on a show in an attempt to convince people to watch is a concept that eludes this promotion). Someone overheard him and ended up spreading the news all around the TNA office. It was a creative video. But since this is TNA they couldn't put this skit on Impact Thursday, which was seen by 1.5 million viewers. No. They put it on Youtube. It got 9,000 views as of Sunday and resulted in the big first five minutes of Impact getting an 0.99 rating. That was also the rating for part one of the Hogan/Flair match. The other video was a ten minute deal where all the wrestlers talked about what TNA meant to them and how important Monday night's show was. This video actually got me excited for the show. They also decided not to put it on television and put it on Youtube instead. Hell of a lot of good that did.

Raw opened at a 3.45 for the Undertaker vs. Michaels segment and then fell to a 3.15 for the girls' match. But TNA in the first two quarters did a 0.99 and an 0.98. So nobody switched from Raw to Impact. In fact, like on January 4th, it appears there was almost no switching back and forth. The Raw viewers watched Raw and the Impact viewers watched Impact -- well, at least for the first hour and a half.

At 10:30 PM, when TNA put that completely nonsensical Jeff Jarrett vs. Beer Money with Mick Foley as referee match on TV, they fell from 1.03 to an 0.95. Then the collapse happened. At 10:45 Impact fell from the 0.95 to an 0.76, and Raw, with Vince heading to the ring for the match with Cena, grew from a 3.27 to a 3.6. To be specific, the overrun for Raw did a 3.98 and the overrun of Impact did a 1.01. Most of Cena vs. Vince and Flair vs. Hogan took place from 10:45 to 11:00, which saw Raw do a 3.6 and Impact do an 0.76. This was also the segment with Hulk Hogan, all bloody, telling Earl Hebner that if the going got tough he wanted Earl to stop the match and save his life -- essentially begging people to turn to Raw.

The peak of the Impact rating was the RVD debut and Sting heel turn, which did a 1.07 rating for two straight quarters. Raw dropped a bit in the first quarter head-to-head, from a 3.27 to a 3.15, but then grew big to a 3.39 in the second head-to-head quarter. So again, it doesn't appear Raw's numbers grew or fell as a result of what was on Impact or vice versa, except for the final 20 minutes when a sizable percentage of Impact fans chose Vince vs. Cena over Flair vs. Hogan.

Full quarters for Raw were 3.45, 3.15, 3.27, 3.15, 3.39, 3.56, 3.27, 3.6 and 3.98. Full quarters for Nitro were 0.99, 0.98, 1.00, 1.07, 1.07, 1.03, 0.95, 0.76 and 1.01.

Raw, it should be noted, was down slightly from 5.3 million viewers to 5.1 million. Conceivably they lost a small number of people to Impact. But last week's show was expected to be up with Bret Hart returning to say his final farewell, and next week's show will be up as well with Steve Austin, three main events and a Bret/Vince contract signing. Most importantly, and this is a lesson that to this day TNA has not learned, even if Raw lost 300,000 viewers and dropped to 5 million over two hours, they're still going to convince 20% of them to buy WrestleMania this year, which will net the company over $20 million in revenue. TNA did 1.4 million viewers, down 100,000 from Thursday, but even if they added 500,000, if they do 20,000 buys for Destination X, a number that I would consider them to be lucky to get, they're losing money yet again on a PPV they can't convince anyone to buy.

And speaking of money, regardless of the Spike spin they're not only doing lower ratings on Monday than they were on Thursday, but they have the added expense of going live, which combined with the drop in ad revenue for a lower-rated show is going to take a big bite. Bringing demos up by 5% and 11% isn't going to come close to offsetting that, and if ratings stay at this level or even sink, which is a very likely possibility, I cannot imagine Spike not forcing them to move back to Thursdays within the next three to six months.

It should also be noted that not only does Raw have Steve Austin, the Bret/Vince contract signing and three WrestleMania rematches next week, but they announced all of this and strongly promoted it on the show. TNA went off the air with NOTHING plugged for next week, not a single match. I guess it's back to Youtube to alert the 9,000 hardcores that they might get a match or two with a couple of superstars but it's top secret and they can't reveal who they are.

We published a day late to get these numbers. Next week we probably won't. There is no story to be told here, and unless Dixie has an epiphany and demands a major overhaul -- starting with the axing of Russo -- there will not be any story to be told any time in the near future, unless the story is that Panda or Spike is throwing in the towel.

[St. Jimmy]

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