I see it every day in the General TNA Complaints thread, as well as through various threads elsewhere – most folks' biggest problem with TNA is their lack of a "direction". Now, I'm sorry, becuase perhaps it's because I'm the idiot so many of you perceive me to be, but then again, perhaps it's because the use of an arbitrary noun like "direction" means absolutely nothing when used in the context you all tend to use it in – that's to say, as a cop out argument to which you never actually explain your reason for? Yeah, I'm gonna go with the latter on this one.
Well, here's your chance at redemption. Your very own thread with which to actually describe to WrestleZone just what you mean by that.
You think TNA needs "direction"? Great! All I need from you now is for you to explain what the fuck "direction" actually means and we can all move forward.
I’d probably be going with the first, actually, by the looks of this thread.
I think it should be pretty obvious what people are saying when they reference “direction”. Most people that I know of claim TNA has NO direction. What does that mean in detail? It means planning out every aspect of your product and knowing what ‘direction’ you want to take with every division, every title, every storyline. It means having a vision of where you want to be say in a year and then following a ‘direction’ of just how to get there, step by step, for the duration of that year, at least.
In most cases TNA feels as if they have no clear vision or direction of where they’re going months from now, they’re just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing which ones stick. I can explain my own complaints with TNA having no ‘direction’ with the simple example that every major storyline TNA has done has never reached some sort of clear ending. Not even the Main Event Mafia angle they were building for months and months had what felt like a clear ending, it just kind of abruptly stopped and they jumped to a completely new direction. They drop storylines constantly, they swerve down a different direction all the time in angles (ones that most often don’t make any sense or contradict previous things).
Do they have a ‘direction’ they’re going with the Fourtune stable or are they just winging it week by week and allowing Flair a chance to have his spotlight? Do they have some direction they’re going with the X Division or are they just buying time with Doug Williams carrying the title until some idea jumps out at them? Do they know what they want out of Rob Van Dam’s title reign or are they just trotting along as it feels like with the show’s focus on other things a lot more then their main, major title? Or what about the failed Monday Night wars version 2, where they hyped things, made claims about things, and seemed so sure they had a set vision and were dedicated to where they were going despite the struggles clearly ahead.. but then when it started to flounder they changed directions quickly, tossing away whatever ‘direction’ they’d planned for the venture, instead of staying the course as if they had clear plans and clear goals that they weren’t going to give up on so easily just because things were rough to begin with.
The most clear and present example of TNA not having any ‘direction’ is the fact they’ve been building up storylines for some time now, including this whole “They” angle, and then out of nowhere they brush it all aside and overshadow it all with this ECW reunion tour. Does it feel like the whole ECW angle was planned far in advance? To me it feels like the direction their product has been going for months now suddenly took a huge swerve down another road and it may swerve back on path but who really knows? This whole “special” PPV for the rest of the roster doesn’t feel like it was always the plan but it feels as if they just threw it together last week because they thought “hey, we probably should do something with the rest of our roster and you know, all those storylines we’ve been developing..”
Actually, it feels a great deal like WCW, especially in its later years. WCW felt like it completely lacked any direction and they were just tossing out stuff hoping that something would work and be successful for them. In other companies, like the WWE or even Ring of Honor, you get a sense that they have long term plans with every level of their product. They seem to have ‘direction’ with where they’re going and what they want their product to be. That’s the difference, and that’s exactly what people are complaining about. If that doesn’t make anything clearer for you I guess you might as well just tune out those people because you’ll never understand.
