The New TNA PPV Strategy... and why I Think it is a Bad Idea

[Big Red Machine]

In an effort to increase their Pay-Per-View business, TNA Wrestling recently announced that they were going to completely overhaul their Pay-Per-View structure, scaling back from the twelve live Pay-Per-Views a year which has been the standard for mainstream companies in the industry since 1996, down to a Big Four. During the other months, TNA will air pre-taped “One Night Only” themed Pay-Per-Views on Friday nights, for a much cheaper $14.95. Impact will only be used to build up to the Big Four, whose price has been bumped up five dollars to $39.95, aside from Bound For Glory, which will now be $44.95. I don’t have the buyrates for most of TNA’s Pay-Per-Views in front of me, but I don’t think the specific numbers are particularly relevant for two reasons. Firstly because they don’t have much meaning unless I know what TNA’s target buyrate goal was, and more importantly, the fact that this overhaul is happening tells me the only thing that really matters here: The numbers were lower than what TNA wanted, and were far enough below their goal that they felt such a major change was necessary. TNA is taking a big risk here and are hoping it will pay off… but I don’t think it will.

This plan does have some good points, so I will start off with those. Firstly, the cost. Asking fans for thirty-five dollars a month is pretty steep. Forty dollars every three months is much more reasonable. Offering themed Pay-Per-Views with very few (if any) storyline consequences for a cheaper price is a great idea, as those fans to whom the theme appeals will be likely to buy it, and those who don’t can skip it while resting comfortably that they aren’t missing anything particularly important. I already know that I will probably be ordering the X-Division show (quality wrestling!), the Knockouts show (to actually see how good these women are if they are actually given enough time to put on a great match), and possibly the TNA 10 show, depending who is on the card.
One unfortunate note about these shows, is that they are taped months in advance. If you can avoid spoilers (and I usually make it a point to do so), this is mostly fine, but if you can’t that could kill interest in the show for some people. More importantly, though, is that certain Pay-Per-Views could create major problems. At the moment I am specifically talking about the “Jokers Wild Tag Team Special” which is billed as a tournament featuring teams composed of guys who are feuding with each other. I have very little interest in this show, so I looked at the spoilers, and my first thought was that “I didn’t know that any of these guys were feuding with each other” (aside from one pairing which is a feud that hasn’t been relevant since Bound For Glory). This show was taped on January 12, but is set to air in May. If TNA is not careful, they could wind up in a very bad Disney-tapings type of situation.

The goal of a wrestling company is to make money, and Pay-Per-View is the most efficient means of doing that. Pay-Per-View exponentially increases your event’s potential audience. Without it, your total number of paying customers is limited to the maximum seating capacity of the venue. With Pay-Per-View, you can reach anyone in the world with TV set and a TV package that lets them order it… and all for just the one-time costs of putting on the show and paying the transmission fee. You can also get away with charging more for the Pay-Per-View than you would for a DVD of the show because it is live… and you wind up with an even bigger increase because you don’t have to pay to produce and ship the DVD.
Because Pay-Per-Views are such big money makers for wrestling promotions, it is imperative that a promotion entice as many fans as possible to order the Pay-Per-View. The problem is that, when you are putting on free live TV every week (Smackdown usually isn’t live, but there is a short enough turnover time between the tapings and the airing that it is fairly easy for even an involved internet fan to avoid spoilers for a few days) that gives away the results of the Pay-Per-View, as well as also having wrestling matches on it, why should the fans pay for the Pay-Per-View? After all, if they really want to see the matches, they can just order the DVD when it comes out, usually for about half the price of the live show.

The answer is that you use your TV to build to your Pay-Per-Views, to make the Pay-Per-View something that fans will feel that they can’t miss watching live, and I think that this is what TNA is missing. If the problem was just that TNA Pay-Per-Views are too expensive and fans don’t want to pay for them, then scaling back the numbers of Pay-Per-Views a year would help. The problem is that TNA does not make their Pay-Per-Views worth their fans’ money. These two things might sound similar, but they are different. In the first example the problem is entirely monetary. A less wealthy fan still wants to see the shows, but isn’t able to afford them due to their cost, while a rich fan will still be ordering all of the shows. In the second example, the issue is quality. TNA is failing to make their Pay-Per-Views something that fans are willing to spend the cost of the show on. It doesn’t matter how cheap the show is. If the fans don’t see it as being worth their money, they won’t buy it. For an example of this, look at ROH’s Death Before Dishonor X. The only matches whose outcomes were in doubt at all were two undercard matches- Haas & Titus vs. Briscoes in the Semi-Finals of the tag title tournament and the Survival of the Fittest Qualifier between Silas Young and Tadarius Thomas- and everyone knew that their outcomes wouldn’t actually matter because there was no way that either Thomas or Young would make it past the first round of Survival of the Fittest and the “if you lose, you are fired” stip make certain that there was no way that Jacobs & Corino weren’t going to win the tag team titles in the finals of the tournament. It was a show with no blow-offs on it and whose outcomes were never in doubt, and as a result, the show got a lot fewer buys that ROH wanted… and this is a internet Pay-Per-View that only cost $14.95 and is being put on by a company that doesn’t have TNA’s history of making their Pay-Per-Views seem like they aren’t worth paying for.

Making the Pay-Per-View something the fans are willing to spend their money on is the job of first the bookers and the wrestlers. Obviously if a wrestler botches a lot or doesn’t cut promos that make you care about his or her angle, the fans won’t want to pay to see him or her, but I am going to talk about the booking because I think that is where TNA’s weakness lies.

Obviously, you have to book things that people want to see. If wrestler isn’t a good worker or isn’t someone that the fans have any interest in seeing, you shouldn’t be booking that person on your Pay-Per-View. TNA has gotten a lot better about this in the past six months or so, but TNA has a long history (which the Hogan-Bischoff era has only made worse) of booking guys who are poor workers (Garrett Bischoff, Rob Terry, Anarquia), whose gimmick limits their ability to work (Robbie E- having seen some of his stuff outside of TNA, I think Rob Eckos is pretty good), or guys who are decent or even good workers who the fans just don’t care that much about (Kid Kash, Madison Rayne, Crimson, Gunner, Jesse Sorenson, Hernandez as a heel, Devon once his feud with Bubba ended) onto their Pay-Per-View cards (and, in some cases, in prominent spots) while guys who are much more talented and much more over sit on the bench (Alex Shelley, Amazing Red, Mr. Anderson, Doug Williams, Magnus, Pope, Homicide, Alissa Flash- yeah, I know that last one is going back a while, but I am still really pissed off at it). Having better workers on the shows usually ensures better matches. This is an important because fans want good wrestling on their Pay-Per-Views. If the wrestling isn’t going to be worth my money, why should I buy the Pay-Per-View when I can just find out the results for free on Impact later in the week?
Another extremely important part of making a Pay-Per-View worth the fans money (which is doubly important if you are using someone who is limited in the ring) is building up the Pay-Per-View card with matches that are important and exciting. They need to be matches that people want to see, with the chances of things happening that people want to see happen, and the happenings of your Pay-Per-View need to have some sort of consequences.

The easiest short-cut to accomplishing this goal is with your titles, which should already be important. While the TNA World Heavyweight Title is in great shape, the rest of the belts aren’t. I’ll start with the easy ones first. The Knockouts Tag Team Titles haven’t felt important since Kong and Hamada held them back in early 2010, I haven’t really cared about who the champions were since TnT lost the belts, and they became a complete and total farce the moment they wound up around the waist of a comedy act… one of whom has a Y chromosome. The TV Title has been around for over four years now, and in that time the only time it has ever felt important or interesting to me was the two months when Eric Young turned it into the Global Title and refused to defend it against American wrestlers.

A championship is important because of what it signifies, and as a result of that, because of everyone wants it. A championship that is the top championship of its division (so not a TV or US or IC title or whatever) signifies that its holder is the best wrestler (or team) in that division. Because of this, everyone should want the top title in their division. Now don’t get me wrong. It is okay for wrestlers get sidetracked by a blood feud, but there should be people chasing the title at all times, in order to show that being the best is important to them. TNA’s problem is that rather than multiple people, all of the titles aside from the world title are usually being chased by just one person at a time. I’m not saying that you need to have three or four way matches at every Pay-Per-View. You just need to have people who want that title on TV in a way that shows their desire to win that title, by, at the very least, competing in matches and trying to pick up some victories that might eventually lead to a title shot.

Since Bound For Glory 2011, tag team, women’s and especially the X-Division have been represented on TV each month almost exclusively by the champion and whoever the challenger of the month was. Anytime that anyone else appeared they were wrestling either the champion or the challenger, and the whole purpose of the match was to set up some sort of interaction between those two. This is extremely damaging to the title in multiple ways. First, it creates the feeling that the division isn’t important. If it is not worth the company’s time to book matches in it, it can’t be that important. Secondly, if the division has such low visibility, why does it matter who is the best? If the division isn’t important, the title isn’t important. This is situation also leads to random #1 contendership matches between guys who either haven’t been on TV in months (and thus haven’t done anything to earn a title match) or have just lost to the champion and haven’t done anything to earn another title match. Having the standards for earning a title shot be so abysmally low also makes the title look unimportant. If the titles are important, then chasing and winning them also becomes important. If the title is important and you have done an effective job at building a challenger, then people will be willing to pay to see the match on Pay-Per-View.

Challengers for titles aren’t the only things that need to be built up on TV to make the fans willing to pay to see the match on Pay-Per-View. Every character should be built up in the way that the story demands going into your Pay-Per-View. If the angle for your Pay-Per-View match is that this will be a great, athletic match and both guys have an even odds of winning then needs to book them relatively evenly in the build to your Pay-Per-View. Don’t but one of them over the other and not give the other one the win back (in equal fashion; if one guy wins clean, don’t have the other win because the first guy was distracted). If the angle is that the heel’s manager always stops the babyface from winning and you are building to a match where the manager is barred from ringside, don’t have the babyface win a match where the manager is present at ringside. I know that it seems pretty straightforward, but you’d be amazed how often this sort of thing gets screwed up.
Take the case of the Aces & Eights. They are supposed to be a gang of big tough bikers who are a threat to TNA and its wrestles… but entire gangs of armed Aces & Eights members have constantly either been beaten up by or run away from just one or two TNA guys. This makes Aces & Eights look like they aren’t a threat to our heroes and it makes it look like they have no chance in hell of beating them on equal footing. If Aces & Eights have no chance of winning, why would I want to pay to see their match on the Pay-Per-View? How many straight Pay-Per-Views did Kid Kash and Jesse Sorensen wind up with title shots on last fall/winter? Or go back to 2010: If RVD can beat AJ Styles despite it being his forth match in less than 27 hours, what chance does AJ have of beating a fresh RVD on Pay-Per-View? Proper build makes matches interesting and exciting, and makes fans more willing to spend their money on it. Bad build does the opposite.
Another related issue that TNA has is that when they have something fans are willing to pay to see (whether through proper build or just through the luck of having a cool first-time-ever match-up on their roster), they often just give it away for free on Impact. This tends to happen for two reasons. The first is the stronger emphasis on trying to get good ratings rather than trying to get more Pay-Per-View buys which really seems to have been the business model of the Hogan-Bischoff era. An example of something TNA has just given away like this is the aforementioned first-time-ever dream match between AJ Styles and RVD (for the world title, no less!), or big things such as Sting’s mystery returns (and taking the title from Jeff Hardy), Sting winning the title from Anderson on Impact (and a lot of other instances of TNA putting all of their focus on hyping specific episodes of Impact (which they did multiple times in 2011), and as a result the Pay-Per-Views soon after those episodes of Impact got thrown under the bus.

The other reason that this happens is… well… just plain incompetence. If you have something fans want to pay to see, save it for the Pay-Per-View! You know… when they actually do PAY to see it. If you have something that you could build into something that fans might pay to see… try building it into something the fans might pay to see, then put it on Pay-Per-View!

Once again, this all seems very obvious, and yet TNA has somehow failed to realize on many great Pay-Per-View opportunities and instead decided to give them away for free on Impact. A great example of this was James Storm vs. Bobby Roode. The first match that these two had after Roode turned heel on Storm and stole the World Heavyweight Title from him is the sort of thing that is pretty much going to draw Pay-Per-View buys on its own. The rest of the card almost doesn’t matter. If TNA had done this on Pay-Per-View- no gimmicks, just a plain old regular match that would give Storm the opportunity to get his hands on Roode and win back the title that was stolen from him- it would have done HUGE business. Instead, TNA gave it away FOR FREE on Impact (2/2/2012- and with less than an hour’s worth of hype and it wasn’t even the main event! GRR! But that is a separate rant). How about the match last fall where Sting needed to beat Flair in order to be able to face Hogan for control of TNA at Bound For Glory? Why do that on Impact when you can do it at No Surrender and make some money off of it? Or how about the aforementioned first ever match between AJ Styles and RVD? Why would you give that away for free?

Assuming all of these problems are fixed, the next hurdle TNA faces is that of trust. The fans need to trust that the Pay-Per-View that you have built up to will be worth their money. If you build up to your Pay-Per-View well but then the show sucks, it doesn’t matter how well you build up to the next Pay-Per-View because people will think that the quality of the wrestling will not be worth the money. Matches being bad is not just something that can be caused by the wrestler botching moves. Too many run-ins or non-clean finishes, and other types of overbooking tend to piss fans off and make them not willing to pay for your show because things have not been resolved. One or two is okay if you absolutely need them to start or progress a storyline, but if you have them just for the purpose of continuing a feud in a way that makes it feel as if nothing at all has changed or been resolved, then people won’t buy your Pay-Per-Views because nothing in your storylines change on the Pay-Per-Views, and thus it is no more important than the free TV show. Another way to make the fans feel that a match was not worth their money is if it wasn’t given an appropriate amount of time. Image if the first Joe vs. Angle match back at Genesis 2006 had gone five minutes? Or the Roode vs. Storm blowoff at Bound For Glory 2012? People would have been pissed as hell because the match didn’t get the time it deserved. TNA, unfortunately, has a track-record of doing both of these things, and as a result, fans don’t think that TNA’s Pay-Per-View matches will be worth their money.

For many fans, simply having great matches on your Pay-Per-Views is usually not enough. You need to make the matches (and other storyline-based occurrences) on your Pay-Per-View matter to the story. If all of the development happens on Impact then fans who enjoy wrestling for the storylines will not buy the show, and you’ll make a lot less money. The first way to do this is add a stipulation to the match, whether it is making the outcome of the match have some important effect (winner becomes #1 contender, winner becomes the loser’s maid for week, hair vs. hair, etc.) or making the match a gimmick match such as Hell in a Cell, Ladder match, Tables Match, etc. (an important note on gimmick matches: if you do them too often, they stop becoming special and thus people won’t pay to see them anymore). If you do this, you MUST MUST MUST make sure that the stipulations are followed up on! If a guy loses his mask and it has no effect on his character at all, then the fans are less likely to pay to see another Mask vs. Mask match because you have broken the trust between the promotion and the fans that the stipulation was important.
If you want proof of this just ask yourself when TNA was hyping this Final Resolution last month, did you really believe them when they said that the match between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels would be the last ever match between those two? Of course not! Why? Because this is about the FIFTH “final match ever” that AJ and Daniels have had against each other in TNA… IN THE PAST EIGHTEEN MONTHS!

While killing your stips making them not important is bad enough, there is one thing that you can do that is even worse than that, and this is the thing that TNA, unfortunately, has a very well-deserved reputation for doing: screwing the paying fans while simultaneously rewarding those who didn’t. This offense generally falls into two different categories. The first is making the results of the Pay-Per-View inconsequential by doing something like switching a title change right back on TV after the Pay-Per-View, giving a rematch of comparable or better quality with the exact same result, or having a Pay-Per-View stip overturned (like the “no-rematch” clause from the World Heavyweight Title match at Genesis 2010) or somehow superseded (for example, Storm won #1 contendership at Turning Point 2012, but then put it on the line on TV and lost it to Roode). The second is by giving away more on TV than you did on the Pay-Per-View. Examples of this would include having the champ retain on Pay-Per-View but then doing a rematch and a title switch on TV, doing a rematch with a bigger gimmick match or stip on TV, or doing a draw or a screwy finish on Pay-Per-View, then giving the rematch away on TV. Basically, anything that makes someone who bought the Pay-Per-View say “why the hell did I pay for that when it turned out that it didn’t matter at?” or “why the hell did I pay for that when I could not paid for it and have gotten more on free TV?”

Why did I go into such detail about all of this? Because these are all things that TNA has done over the years and continues to do this very day. For years TNA has been sending its fans the message that they should not buy TNA Pay-Per-Views because they will not be worth the money. It doesn’t matter if you are doing four Pay-Per-Views a year, twelve Pay-Per-Views a year… if you don’t make the fans feel that it is worth their money to buy them, fans will not buy your Pay-Per-Views no matter how cheap they are, as Death Before Dishonor X proved.

For this to succeed, TNA needs to get approximately two new buys on each of the big four in order to make up for each buy they have lost from people who bought the other eight Pay-Per-Views, while each buy on the big four that they lose because of their bad booking hurts them more than usual because they can’t make up for it if they manage to book one of the other eight well enough to get someone to buy it who normally wouldn’t. The new One Night Only themed Pay-Per-Views are intended to make up for this loss, as each two buys they get from one of those will make up for one lost buy on the old monthlies, and I think that they will manage to recover the money, and possibly make some, but I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility that they won’t for a few reasons.
The first is the lack of interaction with the normal stories. I think that it might turn more people off than TNA thinks. Some don’t like “just matches.” There are a lot of American fans who can barely sit through a puro show because of the lack of storylines. The supposed lack of storylines is also a reason that critics have given for people finding it hard to get into ROH, and is why a lot of people gave up on Evolve after its first year of shows. These probably people aren’t going to buy the One Night Only shows unless the action is PWG-level tremendous up and down the card. I realize that the lack of ridiculously bad TNA storylines will also generate buys from people who normally wouldn’t buy TNA Pay-Per-Views, but those people will only stay around if the show is booked in such a way that it makes the wrestling worth the money (and the only way to know in advance would be reading spoilers, which will also likely turn a lot of people off).
The second concern I have is that the One Night Only shows all seem repetitive. Of the eight released, five of them are tournaments, and based on their names, three of those tournaments (the last three to be taped, too, I believe) will feature a lot of foreign talent. Both the repetitiveness of theme and the possible unknown of foreign talent is very likely to drive some people away. Not everyone follows New Japan or AAA or Ring Ka King or whoever else TNA decides to bring talent in from, and thus they won’t know the talent and won’t be able to get excited about them.

I am willing to give the Knockouts’ Tournament a semi-pass on the repetitiveness issue as the boobs will make it feel different, but the current state of the Knockouts Division creates a repetitiveness problem all its own. I think we have seen just about every single pairing of Knockouts available feud with each other, so I’m not really sure how they expect to carry a Pay-Per-View without bringing in fresh blood... which could be a good thing if it forces them to bring some other women in on a full-time basis to freshen up the division. TNA has always talked the talk, but it has been WAY too long since they have actually walked the walk when it comes to having the best women’s division in wrestling.

Like the Knockouts, the X-Division has always been a source of pride for TNA and its fans, but I’m not sure that an X-Division Pay-Per-View will draw much either, but that is for a much different reason. To be frank, the X-Division is a shadow of its former self. TNA’s rebuilding of the X-Division over the past two years has resulted in a lot of fan favorites leaving the company and being replaced by guys who are, in some cases less talented, and in all cases, have not been given the time to get over. The days of Amazing Red, Jay Lethal, Petey Williams, and the Motor City Machine Guns are gone. Brian Kendrick and the Young Bucks came and went, and Aries, Daniels, AJ, Joe and even Kaz have all permanently transitioned away from the division, and Jeff Hardy is in a similar boat. Yes, RVD is a draw and Kenny King and Zema Ion are awesome, but other than that the best we are left with is Kid Kash, who can still go, but is decently passed his prime. Christian York doesn’t have the exciting style of offense that the X-Division label has connoted, Sonjay’s employment status is up in the air, Sorensen is still injured (and was never that good, either), and other than that, there is… well… no one, really. Joey Ryan and Chavo Guerrero fit stylistically, I guess, but that’s about it. A complete and total overhaul of the division is needed before it can carry a Pay-Per-View.

The other two One Night Only shows are both reunion shows, and both concern me, but for completely different reasons. While I think that the TNA 10 reunion show would be cool, let’s face it: most of the guys they would likely bring back for are likely either on the current roster anyway, too old to work (looking at you, Raven) retired (unfortunately not the same thing), or are under contract to other major organizations, both in North America and Japan. You could bring back Petey Williams, Traci Brooks, and Amazing Red, maybe get Ki to come over from Japan and get Chris Harris, Matt Bentley, and Monty Brown out of retirement. I’m sure Jeff Jarrett would wrestle and I’m sure that Sabu would show up, but without guys like Jerry Lynn, the Disciples of the New Church, Elix Skipper, and the 3 Live Kru, it would come across as a very anemic reunion show…
And speaking of anemic reunion shows, the that fact that they want to do another ECW reunion show scares me a lot. Between the reception that their own ECW reunion show got and the disaster of a show that was Extreme Reunion (any time you get chants of “END THIS SHOW!” you have crossed over into “disaster” territory) the fact that they would want to do another ECW reunion show tells me that TNA management is out of touch with its fans. The reunion shows also aren’t something that is going to work more than once every few years. What are they going to replace them with next year? Yet ANOTHER tournament? Or maybe something ridiculously out of touch like the ECW reunion show idea?

The final gripe I have is more a gripe with the execution of the whole thing than with the concept. I think that the biggest moneymaker here will be the One Night Only shows… but TNA could be doing those WITH a twelve Pay-Per-View schedule, too! I don’t think that the Pay-Per-Views that TNA will actually be cutting cost them much money to produce. All of those Pay-Per-Views always take place in the Impact Zone so there isn’t any additional venue-booking fee, they aren’t losing ticket sales because they can’t charge admission to the Impact Zone, and there is no way in hell that the buyrates are so low that they don’t cover the transmission-fee multiple times over. Why not leave those the way they are and take One Night Only on the road? You are already paying for the arena and paying to for travel fees, so the only extra cost would be transporting the lighting and recording equipment. Take a random house show and make it something more important. If RF Video could make tons of money selling random ECW house shows, then TNA should be able to make a ton of money selling some house shows for a cheap price (this will also probably raise house-show attendance, which will bring in more money).
TNA won’t increase their buys on the big four without competent booking, but with competent booking they could increase their buys on six, eight, or even twelve Pay-Per-Views, too!

[cero2k]

From what I took from this, you're saying that booking is the main problem. But how i see it, booking is another game, so I take it out of the equation. Because at the end of the day, be it 12 PPVs or 4, if booking is good, then the whole product is good.

now, reasons why I think this is the best move for TNA.

We could arguably say that most TNA fans follow WWE by default, likely, they're more involved with WWE. That means that you have to decide whether you invest in the WWE PPV or the TNA PPV. Not because the product is better, but most fans will rather invest in the WWE PPV, I don't personally buy WWE PPVs, but i do go to a bar that does, those bars equally won't invest in the TNA PPV, not because the product is bad, but because it's not as main stream as WWE. Simple. So even if TNA comes out with the best booking and the best card (which they've done before on many occasions), they're not changing the tide of buy rates, they may get some more, but nothing special. So from TNA's perspective, why invest in so many live PPVs that won't make as much money as they would want even if they book a perfect 10 card.

Now, from the WWE PPVs that I personally don't miss for the world are mainly the 'new' WWE Big 4 (Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble, Money In The Bank, and Summerslam), simply because it's the shows that WWE offers a show that usually mean something big. Some big matches, feud payoffs, big names, etc. The rest of the shows i'll watch depending on the card and if I have nothing to do. With TNA's new program, each PPV will be treated as such, when you can only use a PPV for big stuff every 3 months, they'll have to make it count, will I like the booking? I don't know, i don't really care as long as the matches are worth my time. The point is that, after 3 months of not watching a PPV, I'll really really feel like checking one out and that is good for TNA.

In the same idea, Impact will now become a more important show, simply because with 3 months between PPV and PPV, things need to happen on Impact now, we'll start seeing title changes, reveals, debuts and returns. Just look at tonight's Impact for an example. A lot may not like the booking, but things are happening. This is something that is hard to expect with the 12 PPV program, because it makes sense to leave big developments for the PPVs so you'll feel inclined in buying the next...so why watch the programming then if the big stuff happens on PPV. I haven't watched a full Smackdown, Main Event, or Superstars in years simply because i know nothing really worth wild happens. No pipe bombs, no nexus, nothing like that. With Impact being live now and the only outlet for TNA wrestling between PPV and PPV now, it's surely to have stuff happen. It makes me wanna check out.

Now with the One Night Only shows. I like them...scratch that, I LOVE THEM. These are the perfect shows for me, shows that I can sit and enjoy for the wrestling itself. This last year, i found myself following WWE, TNA, ROH, CHIKARA, AAA, and NXT to the fullest, plus ACW, SHIMMER, SHINE, NJPW, and PWG vaguely. I'm soooo exhausted of following storylines. For once, I just wanna sit down and watch random shows like I used to when i was buying ROH and PWG shows every month, sure they have stories there, but since I never really watched any sequentially, as long as i knew the reason of the fight was good enough for me. Anyway, these ONO shows bring me back to that, I wanna sit down and just check out a 3 hr long tournament or gimmick show, I don't care if there are no consequences or build ups, i'm just psyched about watching Lince Dorado and Petey Williams fight again. And they're cheap! 15 dlls I'm willing to pay for a quality video reception, hell, i've payed 15 dlls for crappy ROH streams, why not invest here instead. I'm also considering buying some of these DVDs that turn out good. All of this money goes for TNA which is good. Money that i wouldn't otherwise give them. So at the end, they're plan is working someway. TNA has always been about the wrestling, not much about the stories, here, they're playing to their strength.

I do have the problem that they're taped 3 months before they air, i can handle being spoiler free for a week or two. 3 months is hard. But then again, i'm watching these for the sake of the match, not the result. Looking at the list in the news section, i'm right now set on checking each of the shows, even the Joker's Tourny and the Hardcore Justice nostalgia show.

I think TNA has understood that the 12 PPV program doesn't really work for anyone other than WWE. Not because WWE has amazing booking, for we all know that's not true (there's no such thing as perfect booking), but simply because WWE sells for the namesake and the star power, it's like Justin Bieber, his music may not be the best, but he sells out just for the namesake.

I'm quite optimistic about TNA this year, the booking will stay the same, but it's been a long time since i've let booking affect me or get to me. With this move, TNA, at least to me, has made every show worth checking out.

[Big Red Machine]

The cutback just seems WAY too drastic to me. Why not scale back down six PPVs? Or why not just lower the cost of the small PPVs to $20. I'm certain they would still be making money off of them. Hell, they could even make Destination X cost somewhere in between because it is always a popular show.

I agree that this change allows matches on Impact to feel bigger... but they only feel bigger if you build up to them well. Will the title shots on Impact feel big? Or will they feel like random throwaways like the OFN/Championship Thursday defenses do or like this upcoming Hardy vs, Daniels match next week feels?

Just because you are doing 12 PPVs doesn't mean that Impact can't have important things happen on it. Turns, returns, attacks that put people out or start feuds, and all other important plot points can still happen on Impact.

Nothing important ever happens on Smackdown, you say? We have had two world title changes on Smackdown in the past two years, and neither one of those was in an MITB related situation. I won't disagree with you about Smackdown feeling unimportant, but just because WWE screwed up doesn't mean that TNA has to as well.

[cero2k]

The cutback just seems WAY too drastic to me. Why not scale back down six PPVs? Or why not just lower the cost of the small PPVs to $20. I'm certain they would still be making money off of them. Hell, they could even make Destination X cost somewhere in between because it is always a popular show.

I agree that this change allows matches on Impact to feel bigger... but they only feel bigger if you build up to them well. Will the title shots on Impact feel big? Or will they feel like random throwaways like the OFN/Championship Thursday defenses do or like this upcoming Hardy vs, Daniels match next week feels?

Just because you are doing 12 PPVs doesn't mean that Impact can't have important things happen on it. Turns, returns, attacks that put people out or start feuds, and all other important plot points can still happen on Impact.

Nothing important ever happens on Smackdown, you say? We have had two world title changes on Smackdown in the past two years, and neither one of those was in an MITB related situation. I won't disagree with you about Smackdown feeling unimportant, but just because WWE screwed up doesn't mean that TNA has to as well.

Six would have been ok, but there's not a lot of difference between 6 or 4 PPVs a year really. And lowering the price of the lesser shows doesn't sell them more, it's not the price that's the problem, it's the exposure that TNA has. Same reason why ROH shows don't sell better.

Impact depends on the person, I'm right now sold on watching Daniels/Hardy and the Taz reveal, and it had a 1 week 'build up'. Weekly shows don't have to be built for long other than the previous week. What makes them feel bigger is that with no PPVs more stuff will happen and since it's live, you can't really know what or if it will happen. That will make you wanna tune in. This is the only reason I tune in to RAW. Sure this can be achieved with the 12 PPV format, but i'm not saying this is a reason to change it to a 4-PPV format, I'm just saying this is something good that comes out from cutting PPVs.

Exactly about Smackdown, two years and the only thing worth talking about was two title changes. and TNA is definitely making a better job with Impact than what WWE does with Smackdown. Even with the 12 PPV format they had me watching, with this new format, i'm expecting to be watching more shows for i'm expecting bigger stuff to happen.

[Big Red Machine]

Six would have been ok, but there's not a lot of difference between 6 or 4 PPVs a year really. And lowering the price of the lesser shows doesn't sell them more, it's not the price that's the problem, it's the exposure that TNA has. Same reason why ROH shows don't sell better.

I really don't think that exposure is the problem with TNA. There are tons of die-hard wrestling fans out there who don't buy TNA because they don't think it's worth the money they are asking for it. I'm not really sure what TNA can do to get more exposure than they already have. Most people who are wrestling fans- even at the more hardcore end of the casual spectrum- know about TNA.

[cero2k]

Six would have been ok, but there's not a lot of difference between 6 or 4 PPVs a year really. And lowering the price of the lesser shows doesn't sell them more, it's not the price that's the problem, it's the exposure that TNA has. Same reason why ROH shows don't sell better.

I really don't think that exposure is the problem with TNA. There are tons of die-hard wrestling fans out there who don't buy TNA because they don't think it's worth the money they are asking for it. I'm not really sure what TNA can do to get more exposure than they already have. Most people who are wrestling fans- even at the more hardcore end of the casual spectrum- know about TNA.

then why aren't those Die-Hard wrestling fans giving TNA buys to ROH or CHKARA, who are technically giving a better product, cheaper prices, and more accessible mediums ?

and like i said, anyone that knows about TNA and follows TNA is likely following WWE, and chances are they're more involved with the WWE product. If one is to invest in a show, they'll go for WWE, sport bars and venues will rarely buy a TNA show because not being the juggernaut that WWE is, they're not sure if it will bring them people, so they won't buy. We can make the same comparison with UFC and Strikeforce.

and what can TNA do to get more exposure?

- Tour the country, TNA NEEDS to go to the areas where the real wrestling fans are, they're afraid to touch NY, Chicago, Philly, why i don't know, but those fans would love and enjoy watching Aries vs Roode right now. If they have a contract with Universal Studios, it's start to renegotiate the terms.

- Start a relationship with better organizations and companies. Their biggest relationship is with an insurance company, a no name insurance company. They need to get their guys out there. Do stuff with organizations that will make them look good.

- Consider looking for a better TV deal with a mainstream channel. SpikeTV is not that big and mainstream, it doesn't really open the product to kids, women, or the generic WWE fan.

- Offer their PPVs online. It's the way to go. I don't have SKY or anything like that, i barely have basic cable, thus I can't buy PPVs. If TNA offers their PPVs online this year, I would be really inclined to buy them all, at least the ONO ones for sure.

- Work on your merchandise. TNA mostly sells "Jersey Shore" like clothing. Nothing funny, nothing intelligent, just douchy designs. Improve on your image with products that any fan would be willing to wear. Make some GOOD dvd collections. They have over 10 yrs in history now, sell some of that like they used to. Make the effort to make a good documentary about your wrestlers. Capitalize on the talent you have that WWE nor ROH can make money off. Tell us the story of Sting, the story of Angle, the story of Team 3D, invest in some footage to do so.

those are 5 options to make TNA better without even touching the roster or the booking. No one got fired like everyone seems to wish for.