How to possibly "fix" TNA.

[Downhome 0]

The following is from PWInsider, and it's pretty interesting. I messed up the topic title, it isn't what I wanted to put, but whatever.

 

HOW TO GIVE WRESTLING FANS A TRUE ALTERNATIVE, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

 

The worst of opportunities in life are those that are wasted, squandered and lost because those who have the chance to do something special flounder when given the opportunity. As is often the case, they start out with the best of intentions, determined to try and make a difference but in the end, they fall victim to their own excesses and tunnel vision and they end up squandering the chance to really make a difference.

 

As soon as I wrote the above passage, it dawned on me that I could be talking about a lot of things in the wrestling business. That alone is probably a great subject for a column on another day, but for today I have a specific subject in mind.

 

For those who may not know, and if buyrate numbers and feedback that we receive here at the site is any indication, that includes most of you, NWA Total Nonstop Action will air another in their line of weekly pay-per-view broadcasts tonight at 8 p.m. on PPV. Will you be watching? No? Well, I won't be either and I haven't for quite some time, which brings me to this column. I know that some will say, ?How can you critique the product when you don?t even watch it?? It?s a valid question, to be sure. The easy answer here is that my beat is to cover WWE. Since I started in this business, I have always covered the promotions with national exposure, which to me, isn?t NWA TNA since they don?t have a national TV deal and they only run one town. But, even though it wasn?t ever ?my beat?, I love the wrestling business and was pulling for the company from day one. I watched the shows every week for the first year or so. But then they lost me and since I didn?t have to watch, I didn?t.

 

My goal in the article is to explain to those in charge down in Nashville that if they could sour someone who is in their target demographic and writes about wrestling for a living to their product, they have done the same to a lot of others like me.

 

Going back to the beginning, NWA TNA tried to buck the trend of the wrestling business by becoming an all-paying product. They would air shows every Wednesday night, selling two-hour broadcasts for $9.95. As soon as I heard about the concept, I thought it was flawed and would fail for a number of reasons. For one thing, they were budgeting the shows at over $200,000 a week, which given their cut of the PPV money (about 4 dollars a buy), would mean they would need 50,000 buys a week just to break even. They would also need to be well financed since it can take up to a year, or longer, to get paid by the PPV distributors. Right out of the blocks, TNA was never financed well enough nor able to generate anything close to those buyrates. They quickly went through the start up money that Jeff and Jerry Jarrett had put up to start the company, and were told by their then-backer Health South to cut the weekly budget to around $75,000 a week.

 

In retrospect, it really didn?t matter what kind of product that they were putting out in the first few months of the company because:

 

1) They had to know that business would be soft in the beginning since they were a start up.

 

2) Given the amount of time that it takes to get buyrates from the PPV distributors, they had no real way to monitor what kind of business they were doing.

 

So looking back on it, they really spent money poorly in the beginning months of the promotion. But, as long as they had Health South backing them, they would be OK. As bad luck would have it, in August of 2002, Health South?s involvement in the company became public knowledge, and since discretion was the one stipulation that the company had on backing TNA, they pulled out.

 

It?s no secret that TNA almost went out of business at that time. Luckily for Jeff Jarrett however, Dixie Carter, who at the time was running the PR firm that was promoting TNA, went to her parents and got their company, Panda Energy, to buy controlling interest in the company. With the financial problems out of the way, it would have seemed that it would have been time for the company to focus on the creative end of the company and create direction for the product. Unfortunately, that never happened and it leads us to TNA?s biggest problem, and that is that we don?t know what the company sees itself as.

 

Sure, it?s a wrestling company, but from week to week, we don?t know what kind. For a while, they are a Vince Russo-heavy ?Sports Entertainment? vehicle. Then, they push the X Division and wrestling. After that, they are a Southern style fed. The worst part is, in the only area where they can distinguish to their viewers what they are, for ten bucks a shot I might add, they are rarely the same kind of show two weeks running. What they don?t seem to grasp down in Nashville is that this isn?t WWE. If Raw stunk on Monday, all it cost you was your time. You will most probably watch again next week to see if things improve. That is not the case with TNA. In addition to wasting two hours of your time, if they have a bomb of a show is also wastes your money, and this makes a fan less likely to try them again. When you consider that a 1 percent buyrate (around 500,000 buys) is a good number, yet only one percent of the total available audience, it?s fair to say that there aren?t enough people willing to spend money on PPV wrestling shows that you can afford to burn them with bad shows, especially when you consider that 20,000 buys would be a high water mark for the company. That tells me that their potential base of people who would consider buying the product is probably, at best, 250,000. You just can?t turn those people off.

 

Now, I am not saying you can never have a bad show, because that is unrealistic. But, when your creative direction is as scatter shot as TNA?s is, you are creating your own problems and setting yourself up to fail. When you are fighting a battle as tough as TNA?s, you just can?t afford to make the same stupid mistakes, over and over again, that the company just can?t seem to divorce itself from.

 

But I didn?t come here today to just criticize NWA TNA. For the record, I respect the people that work for the company. They put in long, long hours at their jobs and the company isn?t faced with the creative problems that it has due to lack of effort. But sometimes, when you are overworked, you spend your time putting out fires instead of getting to the bottom of what is causing them. You are just so close to the trees that you can?t see the whole forest.

 

So, looking at it from the outside, I came here to offer solutions that may give them a better chance at succeeding and staying in business. The business needs competition and we, as fans, deserve a choice as to how we will spend our hard earned wrestling dollars. As I said above, I am very skeptical that a pay-only product can succeed due to the fact that it?s so hard to exist largely on PPV money, especially when you do no advertising and not only expect people to buy your product, but also to remember it?s on. That?s why, in my opinion, the audience largely consists of internet savvy fans, so it makes sense to give them what they want. They are the hardest of the hardcore fan and those people tend to buy PPVs for the wrestling, not the hype.

 

Here are some changes that I would implement if I were in charge of TNA. Again, I am not saying that it would drive buys through the roof, but at least it would deliver the product that the majority of the people who are willing to spend money will buy.

 

Set up a clear booking direction. The worst shows that TNA has done include overbooking, stupid booking and ridiculous skits. Granted, a lot of them came from Vince Russo-Glen Gilberti booking team, but they still haven?t totally set a direction. Too often, they want to do ?Sports Entertainment? over wrestling. The problem is, they come off as a cheap imitation of the free WWE, while costing the viewer 10 bucks. Since you know most of your fans are net fans and that they buy PPVs to see wrestling, make wrestling the focus of the show. That doesn?t mean that you don?t do angles, but you have to give the fans what they want. If you do that, you could start to develop a loyal, buy-every-week user base that should grow over time.

 

Take the book away from Jeff Jarrett. I personally like Jeff Jarrett. I think he?s a good guy. With that said, TNA is violating my cardinal rule of the business: Never let the top wrestler be the booker. Sometimes it?s due to ego. Sometimes it?s due to wanting to do as much as you can for the product because you can count on yourself. But almost always, the net result is that the booker overpushes himself at the expense of the talent. That is what Jarrett has been doing. There is just too much of him on the shows.

 

Explore other revenue steams. It?s ridiculous that the only place that you can buy TNA DVDs is through their website. If XPW and other companies can get their DVDs sold in mass merchandise stores, there is no excuse for TNA to not do the same thing. A DVD costs a few dollars to make. Instead of charging twenty dollars plus, sell them for 12 to 15 bucks in stores. In addition to the revenue it generates, it?s a free form of advertising. People who buy a DVD may also buy a PPV if they like the product. Also, get the national rental chains, like Blockbuster, to carry the DVDs as rentals. It?s a no brainer. I am sure that there are other potential streams that they can pursue as well. But to me, DVDs would be the best one yet because I fully believe that they need more advertising and buying a TV slot on WGN every week is not the answer (unless they are trying to go under, which at $50,000 a week they definitely could if they did a deal like that). As long as there is no money for advertising in the budget, they have to spread the word however they can. Word of mouth from DVDs is a good first step.

 

Push your own guys. It says a lot about the company that whenever they think they need to make a splash, they go into the ?way back? machine and pull names from the past to appear on their shows. Seeing Sting was nice the first time, but from what I was told it didn?t do much for the buyrates. I don?t even know if it did the extra 2500 buys needed to pay his salary. I know that Lex Luger didn?t do the 1250 needed to pay his. The fact is, AJ Styles is there every week. So is Chris Harris. Push them. Sting hasn?t worked full time in three years. Hulk Hogan isn?t coming in either. Stop sending the message to your fans and your talent that the regulars that you have aren?t good enough to draw the masses.

 

Will that be enough to turn things around and potentially save TNA? I honestly don?t know. But even if they are doing 10,000 buys a week, which from what I have heard from cable industry sources it doesn?t appear they are doing of late, they are generating about $40,000 a week off of their shows (which they will be paid for up to a year later). Multiply that over 52 weeks and the losses are at $2 million, and that is if you are giving them the high figure of 10,000 buys a week.

 

I don?t care how much money the Carters and Panda have, losing two million bucks a year will only go on for so long before they pull the plug, and that is why I wrote this column. I want TNA to succeed. While I don?t ever seem them competing with WWE, I want them to be there for the sake of the business, for the sake of the wrestlers, for the sake of the fans and for the sake of the employees of TNA, some of whom will see their paychecks disappear if they don?t turn things around soon.

 

Sincerely,

...Downhome...

[Guest Choken One]

Easy.

 

Get rid of everyone running the company to the ground.

[Michrome 0]

He said what people have been saying here in this forum for months.

[Guest Dynamite Kido]

He said what people have been saying here in this forum for months.

Unfortunately, they don't take to suggestions.

[BoboBrazil 0]

I agree. I've been saying the dvd thing forever. It's bad enough TNA only sells the dvds through their website, but they only accept paypal as a method of payment.

[Guest JustinCredible2k]

Great read. I agree, too much JJ. Get rid VINCE RUSSO!!! People know what he did to WCW! He is going to do it to TNA now. That bastard.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Aside from bad booking, what did he do to WCW? WCW was still pulling in pretty good ratings for cable (I think they still remained in the Top 15, at least Nitro), and it's not Russo that was put in charge of AOL/Time Warner and went "okay, this WCW thing on TNT and TBS? You know, the show garnering more ratings than anything else we have? Yeah. Get rid of it." I ask again: What did Vince Russo do to WCW that WCW didn't do to themselves?

[BoboBrazil 0]

Based on what I've seen Russo do in TNA, I'd say his shows are much more exciting than the ones without him booking. TNA went to shit without Russo and pretty much killed the fanbase dead. TNA show threads used to get 100+ posts and now there are 1 or 2 posts during a show if that. Russo knows how to make an exciting show. TNA would be turning a profit now if Russo had full control. He wanted to give Raven the belt back on the show in 2003 where Jarrett retained and it totally killed TNA's momentum. Russo didn't kill WCW. If you look at the ratings they were getting when he actually booked then you would see they held steady. Of course he wasn't even booking WCW in their final years except for a few months here and there. Kevin Sullivan was a much worse booker and they kept giving him the book over Russo. Kevin Sullivan's booking reigns caused all the damage to WCW.

[Guest TDinDC1112]

WCW in 2000 was the worst promotion in history.

[Guest Mosaicv2]

way to "fix" TNA hmmm... like Corey has been sayin for the past 5 months... less push Jarrett & dispose of Dutch "dickhead" Mantel. Thats one way

[Guest Mosaicv2]

WCW in 2000 was the worst promotion in history.

actually I find late 1998, 1999 & early 2000 (especially) the worstest times for WCW

[JustJoe2k5 0]

WCW '01 > Anything WWE can do now.

[Jebus 0]

WCW '01 > Anything WWE can do now.

I agree...what a great 3 months!

 

Still some stupid stuff here and there (MI Smooth, Rick Steiner push) but overall awesome!