Looking At Some Grains Of Truth In Dixie Carter’s Spin Cycle

There’s a lot that can be said about Dixie Carter’s recent appearance on The Ross Report, but perhaps the most interesting part that I heard in the midst of her spinning (more on that later) regarded her dealings with Spike TV over the past few years.  Dixie said that she was glad to have left Spike because of the issues they had getting any sort of information from them regarding how well TNA hit the target demo, what Spike considered a target demo versus what TNA considered one, and what overall ratings were.  Further, she said, the promotional job that Spike did was abysmal (I’d have to agree, I rarely saw an ad for Impact, which was one of their top rated shows).

Now, fold this in with what Paul Heyman said last year, which was that when Spike was still known as TNN, they stiffed ECW on their payout to start 2001, and that left Heyman unable to keep operating, as he’d already not gotten back payments from In Demand (pay-per-view operator for cable systems).  Heyman described many of the same issues that Dixie described.  Finally, the reason Vince McMahon went running right back to USA in 2005 when his four-year deal with Spike/Viacom was up is that he was furious at the poor management and promotion that was done for WWE during that timeframe, including how the smaller shows like Heat, Velocity, et al, were slowly ground into dust.

What does that say about a network when three top-tier wrestling promotions over the course of 15 years have run screaming from the place, that Dixie Carter took TNA to a second-tier Discovery Networks station that requires some searching to find on your cable plan instead of staying with Spike?  While she praised everything Discovery was offering her (and I have already seen more ads in two weeks for Impact on Destination America than I saw out of Spike in three months), it’s a downgrade, that’s for sure.  If I were in the wrestling business, I wouldn’t get near Spike with a thirty-foot pole.  They clearly have little knowledge and regard for the consistent audience that pro wrestling brings in, especially with the target demo.  I know many of us, myself included, kind of mocked TNA’s ratings, but an audience of 1.1 million, the vast majority of which is a target demo, should have been treated a little better than TNA apparently was.  Given what’s come out over the past year, it’s pretty obvious the fault was in Spike’s method of operating, and hopefully ECW and TNA will be treated better by history for how their years on that network went.

Moving on, there were some more interesting nuggets found in Dixie’s hour-long talk with Jim Ross.  She said that TNA is cutting back on their touring, as they don’t have the roster size to support the house show schedule they kept.  Truth be told, TNA’s house show problem is just that they can’t get a live audience to pay.  You rent out a minor league ballpark or a 5,000 seat arena, and your attendance is in the 750-1000 range, you’re losing money every time.  It’s been pretty widely reported that TNA’s been a financial drain on their parent company, Panda Energy, for years, and I’ve long felt that TNA should focus on putting out a good TV product every week, and apparently Dixie now agrees.  Probably the best thing in this deal with Discovery is that they will finally get to air more than just Impact every week.  They will be showing other shows that have primarily been taped for the overseas audience, like TNA Xplosion, and that is probably going to be best for business.  TNA needs to build a TV audience to support their house shows, as their roster and touring costs were definitely outstripping what the small crowds brought in.

The first six shows of the year for TNA were done in New York, with the debut being shown live, and quite frankly, if Discovery could make it happen, I think TNA would be better off doing Impact from the Manhattan Center at least a third of the year.  It’s by far the best, most engaged crowd I’ve seen them ever have.  Orlando, former home of the Impact Zone, was just as bad a crowd for TNA as it always was for WCW, and while I know Eric Bischoff loved the idea of a captive audience, the fact is that Orlando is a theme park crowd, and letting people attend tapings for free didn’t help much.  There’s the small hardcore crowd in Orlando that does well (think NXT’s tapings at Full Sail University), but the majority of TNA’s crowd, just like WCW’s, was theme park visitors, and most of those people could give less of a crap about pro wrestling, and it showed.  TNA’s biggest problem was waiting too long to break out of Orlando.  Had they taken Impact on the road years earlier, or moved to New York sooner, they might have a bigger audience today. Eight years in Orlando is just soul sucking.  Even Bischoff got WCW out of Orlando after three years.

I think a lot of TNA’s survival is going to depend on the TV product they put out this year, which means that TNA’s creative is going to have to back Dixie’s declaration on the podcast that they want to do more reality-based storylines, drawing on the wrestlers’ real-life stories to create feuds.  Of everything she mentioned, that was probably the best idea I heard (perhaps Stephanie McMahon could take a lesson from this, because WWE creative is terrible these days).  On the whole, while the podcast is worth a listen, I felt Dixie did a lot of spinning about TNA’s current situation, and while I suppose that is her job, the mountain they have to climb is a lot steeper than she admitted, and if they aren’t facing the truth in private, they’re not going to make it up.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, opinions, feedback and anything else that was raised.