ROH and TNA are Room-Mates! What Does This Mean?
*This article is a written form of what I basically say in an episode of The Suplah*
As I’m sure you’ve all heard recently, that Ring Of Honor has been picked up by Destination America, and will be aired just before TNA.
This is great news for ROH, whom have been struggling recently with a lack of decent ways to watch their product and useless iPPV streams that scare off potential customers more than encourage them.
It is TNA we need to worry about.
Dixie Carter’s TNA Promotion has had an incredibly turbulent year these past 12 months. After dwindling ratings and a re-think of branding on their original channel’s part, TNA saw their chances of national coverage dashed when Spike chose not to renew their contract. TNA had to scramble for a deal by the end of the year or face losing television time. They eventually landed on Destination America which, indeed is a national channel, but isn’t seen by as many people as their former home.
Since then, despite a successful European run, as per usual for the promotion, Destination America has now told TNA to stop broadcasting shows from the UK because it’s ‘MURICAN and anything not ‘MURICAN isn’t worth time on their channel. Indeed they can continue their tours doing house shows. But the difference between their London audience and any other audience in the States was so vastly noticable, not just in size but in the noise the crowd made was massive, and will be a detriment to the company and their product.
Then, most recently, rumours had circulated online that only months after debuting for said channel, TNA was on the verge of being cancelled yet again. Even though Destination America has come out to defend TNA, they haven’t outright said the rumours were false. Further “evidence” was leaked when multiple dirt sheets came out and said that Dixie Carter accidently sent the COO of Destination America a less-than-lovely e-mail insulting the “suits” at the network, which was clearly intended to be for somebody else. Dixie hasn’t said this was true, but neither has she denied it’s happened…
And now the third biggest organisation in the country is moving in, and being aired before them too!
Some people may read this as being something positive:
“Destination America clearly see’s potential in wrestling, the fact they are expanding their timeslots is great!”
But that’s the point. They see potential in wrestling, but not in TNA. If they did see potential in TNA, then surely they would give TNA an extra hour of programming in their networks schedule?
Take this for example. Back in 2012, RAW went to a 3 hour show. Now if the USA network didn’t have faith in the product, they would have picked up ROH themselves, or another wrestling show. But RAW has shown to be a popular show and draw decent ratings for the timeslot it’s in, thus they increased the amount of time the show had (whether they should have is a different conversation altogether).
So what does this mean for TNA? It’s hard to say at this stage, considering the news has just broke. However most of this article is now written, so it would be a waste of time to scrap it all.
In my personal opinion, TNA has been handling everything poorly, and it just shows how poorly managed this company is, that it feels like the desperation of an old, tired man trying to keep up to date with the youth of today, but is so far out of touch that you just wish him to finish with dignity. With the lack of connection to the fans over the recent rumours and allegations against the head of the company, followed by these particular interesting tweets by one of the top villains in the company at the moment:
At no time was TNA talent (that I'm aware of) notified of ROH airing on @DestAmerica . I'll refrain from commenting until after "the call".
— MVP (@The305MVP) May 27, 2015
Yeah so ummm…
PROMOTERS!
BOOKMVPNOW@GMAIL.COM
— MVP (@The305MVP) May 27, 2015
Is concerning to say the least.
The fact that such a huge decision wasn’t even told to those whom it affected is disgraceful. Instead it seems that the stars and employees are learning of their new network buddies in the exact same way we have. Is it Destination America who seemed to neglect telling the TNA staff? Potentially, after all we don’t know the full story. But if that’s the case, why is MVP giving the impression of leaving? If he was disgruntled with the network and not TNA itself, then it wouldn’t make sense to post that. Not to mention this isn’t the first time TNA employees have lashed out at the company on social media. Months ago numerous stars tweeted about finally getting their pay checks, and only a couple of weeks ago Taz walked out on the company after being vocal at his anger with how the company is being ran.
Yes, it seems Destination America has an interest in wrestling. This is why they’ve added more of the industry to their arsenal of programming, and this is great for wrestling fans. But maybe the cracks of TNA are starting to show through to those in charge at the network, and this is the first step, maybe this is them testing out a different brand of wrestling to see how it connects with fans. And if it connects well… I guess TNA could be exactly where they were a year or so ago.
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