The Ringsider – Jim LeMond
The TNA Prognosis?
Our ring-wise analyst considers what may lie in the future for Total Nonstop Action..
Wrestlemania marked the unofficial seven-year anniversary of the death of WCW. And seven years later, the professional wrestling industry is still feeling the aftershocks of the reality that WWE has, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly.
Total Nonstop Action, nearing its six-year mark, has by all accounts the best chance of anyone to become a real #2. Multiple sources indicated that TNA turned a modest independent profit in 2007 and is expected to become very profitable, meaning upwards of $10 million or more, in 2008. TNA has shown a financial compentency once thought impossible, and with its ability to be self-reliant, the chances of owner and financial backer Panda Energy pulling the plugs on TNA are basically non-existant. The future is certainly not bleak, as it was for many years. In fact, things should look fairly bright, but they don’t. There is still reason for much concern. Why?
Simply put, TNA booking is atrocious. Impact is, without question, the worst-booked wrestling program since the dying days of WCW produced monstrocities Nitro and Thunder. 2000-2001 WCW and 2007-2008 TNA are errily similar. To wit:
* Vince Russo is the main booker, and while ratings are respectable (in fact, in TNA they are up, although to be fair Thursday prime time is a much easier slow to draw ratings than Saturday late), PPV buys have plummeted. When TNA was on FSN doing a couple hundred thousand viewers, PPVs averaged roughly 30,000 buys. During the time when TNA was not on TV, PPVs averaged roughly 25,000 buys. With Russo, on Spike, PPVs have averages less than 20,000, with a bottoming out point of about 13,500. His booking in both instances has lead to people just not caring enough to pay money for the product.
* The smaller workrate performers (cruiserweight division in WCW, X division in TNA) have been relegated to low-card jokes. When WCW Nitro debuted, cruiserweights like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and the like tore up the card. When the top guys decided they needed to be put in their place, the division was turned into a complete joke. The four guys mentioned above went on to win world titles in WWE, by the way. The X division was once TNA’s calling card, headlined by a trio of AJ Styles & Samoa Joe & Chris Daniels who produced match-of-the-year quality bouts every time out. The X divison was ruined by Kevin Nash two years ago and never recovered.
* The top of the card is full of old (over the hill) ex-stars, while those deserving of moving up are stifled. Sting, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, and Booker T were considered old and unworthy of their top spots by many at the end of their WCW tenure. That was seven years ago. To illustrate, Sting is good for popping maybe one or two ratings and probably one buy rate per year, but he is hardly worth his $600,000 annual salary has an weekly character. If you take, for example, Nash, BG James, Kip James, Sting, and Steiner off the bookes, you’re saving in the range of $2.5 million annually.
TNA is not without its positives. The majority of the PPVs are action-packed, although the booking has made countless great matches merely good and impossible to care about. Most work hard. The talent level top-to-bottom is superior to that of WWE. Spike TV is very happy with television ratings for Thursday Impact. Taking a cue from WWE, the company has generated a number of revenue streams; in addition to TV rights fees and PPV income, the company has significant income from house shows (including $20 Polaroids after every show), merchandise, international revenue, and perhaps most importantly, a video game available on all of the “next generation” game consoles. Furthermore, TNA has established itself as the main independent talent agency, handling indy appearances for all contracted talent and taking a generous cut.
For TNA to truly break through as a real #2, the booking must make a turnaround. I hate to root for anyone to be fired, but Vince Russo cannot be the top booker. He had great successs as part of a three-man writing crew (along with Vince McMahon and Jim Cornette) in 1997 and 1998, success he has repeatedly taking sole credit for. Many of his absurdly loopy ideas were shot down, and those were the things we have been seeing ever since. His trainwreck style of writing worked ten years ago. Since then, it has failed at every twist and turn. It failed the first two times he was part of TNA, during the early weekly PPV days. It failed when he was re-hired by WWE a couple of years back and was fired after one weekend. It has failed in the last 18 months. I don’t want to beat a dead horse; watch one episode of Impact and after two hours you will find it utterly impossible to emotionally invest. And if you can’t invest your time or your emotion into the product, you surely won’t invest your $29.95 every month for the PPV.
TNA needs a new top booker. When Jim Cornette was booking OVW, it was hands-down the best television program in the country. There were times I would have paid $35 to drive down to Louisville to see one of their Six Flags shows, and not paid 35 cents to see Backlash. My old habit was watching Raw live, writing a recap for this website, then watching OVW tape so I could go to sleep not hating wrestling. There are probably a dozen guys in the company who understand basic booking, plenty outside of the company, and a million fans who no one has ever heard of. I can guarantee you Arnie Katz and I could get write circles around Russo in a drunken stupor.
Improved booking leads to more buys. TNA has at this point topped out at around 60,000 buys for the first Joe-Angle match, a match sold soley on the idea that this was a dream match. If TNA could average 60,000 buys per PPV for a year (as opposed to 15,000 or so in the last year), you’re looking at an additional 45,000 buys per month, or 540,000 buys per year, or $6.5 million in profit. That, along with the aforementioned $2.5 million simply from getting rid of bad contracts, gives TNA an additional $9 million in profit on top of the $10 million-plus expected this year. That’s serious money and that money could go towards any number of things. WWE has utterly dropped the ball with its developmental program, so an agressive plan of snatching up the top young talent to reasonable long-term contracts would be a great way to separate itself from its competition. Outbid WWE for a few top buys when contracts come due and you deliver a serious blow.
Will TNA ever overtake WWE? Probably not, and if so it would have to be at best five years down the road. Can TNA provide a real alternative product, be a real #2 company, and spark a mini wrestling boom period? Odds are long, but it is possible. The company must recognize its faults, though, and until then the company as a whole will continue on its treadmill.
–Jim LeMond
jim_lemond@hotmail.com
(4/14/08)
Loading ...