Would Impact be More Successful if They Were Doing More Tapings?

[Psykohurricane55]

Something, I've beebeen wondering lately is why the impact isn't more successful then it should be. Also why the product doesn't reflect that talent they have on the rosters. I thought maybe is because they tapes too many episode in a row that by the end of the cycle they ran into the problem of not having enough material to put on a full 2 hours show.

So my question is simple, what if impact would only tapes one month worth of show instead of 2 months worth? I feel like by doing more tapings, they would have more material to put on the 2 hour shows every week and in the long run would make the show more entertaining and give them a identity that isn't base on showing clips of other promotions or of past matches that make fans remember the good old time of the company.

Also by doing this, you could make more money if you go to a different location every tapings and do a weekend worth of tapings instead of doing a week worth.

They should also stop doing those one night only ppv since they're losing money on them anyway since nobody is buying them and they have no impact on what going on during the tv shows. If they want to do more ppv, just take the tv special they do every month and put them back on ppv and charge a small fee for them maybe 20 or 25$, that way you can actually make money on the product instead on spending money that you're not going to see back.

In the end, I feel like they need to change strategy as far as their tv tapings are concern because what they are doing right isn't working for them at all, they might save money by doing more taping all at once but if they go on the road with the tapings, they Will lose all the money they are saving by doing this since nobody will go to a wrestling event during the week as proven by the Ottawa tapings,

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Possibly. The fourth, fifth, and sixth (sometimes onward) episodes that are built off the final days of the tapings always feel like you're watching the end of a marathon where runners are just struggling to make it across the finish line with dignity because they're utterly gassed. More tapings would alleviate that, but would also dramatically increase their costs, so I doubt it's something they can afford to do.

 

[Mr.Maikeru_Sawyer]

I think they should go back to the Once A Month tapings. Do the first show semi_live(30 minute or so tape delay) and then film the next 3 episodes.
Then they wouldn't be 2-3 months ahead with spoilers. and like already stated it wont look like the last 2 episodes were rushed/packed into 2 days of taping.
but the biggest thing that would help is if Pop was available on a lower tiered package. If I want Pop I have to have the largest package that my cable provider has and it runs almost 100$ a month

 

[It's Damn Real!]

The spoilers themselves aren't the problem. It's the presentation. There is a noticeable lack of energy by the end of the tapings that makes its way into the episodes and makes for a very poor product. To make matter worse, as was pointed out in the OP, they often run out of footage, making the final few weeks' prior to a new set of tapings brutal to sit through as they fill the gaps with repetitive filler and way too many poorly produced/shot matches from partner promotions.

 

[Richard Blonoff]

Why Impact isn't more successful is a topic you could turn into an anthology series.

The company is in a constant state of cost cutting, so they do everything they can to try to squeeze as much as possible out for as little money as possible. They literally can't afford to operate any other way right now, and they likely won't have the money to change anytime soon, so they have to do the marathon tapings.

They have big names like Lashley, EC3, and Eddie all coming up on the end of their contracts, with Eddie's deal up in February, and word on the street is that none of them are going to be offered anywhere near what they are currently making and they are going to start restructuring how contracts work. Instead of a guaranteed amount, they are going to a per appearance style. That in and of itself isn't awful, but Earl Hebner recently went on record saying some guys were being offered as little as a hundred dollars for a full day of taping.

While I agree with IDR that the final few episodes of a taping set feel flat and you can feel the lack of energy, I'm not sure if they have the money on hand to rent out their taping locations or pay production crews for extra days.

I think the writing needs a kick in the ass personally, that would solve a lot of the issues. More developed and thought out stories would eliminate some of the lethargic feeling the later episodes have. Right now the World Title picture is decent enough with Eli and Johnny and Alberto, but nothing else on the show feels like there is any effort put into it other than the whole ATT story, which I have yet to meet a single person who enjoys. The women just go out and perform a series of moves in random triple threats and there is no real story to anything and it is the same with the X Division, but with more flips and dives. The name guys who aren't in any story just sort of rotate as challengers around the Grand Championship, which wouldn't be awful if they treated that title like more of a traditional title as opposed to the gimmick system currently in place.

 

[stingray11214]

For Impact to become a success, they need to follow that ol' Jim Beam ad: Sometimes you just have to go back to the basics. For one? STOP TRYING TO BE WWE-Lite! TNA was meant to be "Southern 'rasslin" Make it such! There is a huge void for 'rasslin as opposed to "sports entertainment" Fight Network has studio space, doesn't it? Use it and save a ton of money. So you only have 300+ people attend a TV taping. Fine. That is where you push house shows. Be DIFFERENT! Give people a reason to care about you. If you lose Pop!? Fine. market it to local TV as an infomercial. The rates are cheap, and you can control the advertising content. The way they are doing it now is only asking to go out of business.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

For Impact to become a success, they need to follow that ol' Jim Beam ad: Sometimes you just have to go back to the basics. For one? STOP TRYING TO BE WWE-Lite! TNA was meant to be "Southern 'rasslin" Make it such! There is a huge void for 'rasslin as opposed to "sports entertainment" Fight Network has studio space, doesn't it? Use it and save a ton of money. So you only have 300+ people attend a TV taping. Fine. That is where you push house shows. Be DIFFERENT! Give people a reason to care about you. If you lose Pop!? Fine. market it to local TV as an infomercial. The rates are cheap, and you can control the advertising content. The way they are doing it now is only asking to go out of business.

that's a good idea, but from what i've heard Fight network doesn'T have the space to host a wrestling show since they're head office isn't in downtown Toronto but in a smaller part of the city and they barely produce any show at the actual place. But i get you're point i think that they could pull off the studio wrestling thing in toronto if they could get some sort of deal with Santino Marella who own a wrestling school down there and actually has a smaller arena they could do wrestling shows in it. Even make some sort of a deal where they could use his place in exchange of using his students as extra from time to time.

Right now they need to find a way to spend as little as possible while making the shows more interesting and it's not by doing 2 months worth of taping or releasing all your top talents that they will be able to make this a successful business. They need to go back to basic, distance themselves from the TNA products as much as they possibly can and go back to what made them a household name in the first place.

 

[johnbragg]

So my question is simple, what if impact would only tapes one month worth of show instead of 2 months worth? I feel like by doing more tapings, they would have more material to put on the 2 hour shows every week and in the long run would make the show more entertaining and give them a identity that isn't base on showing clips of other promotions or of past matches that make fans remember the good old time of the company.

The way they're doing it now is cheaper. There are fixed costs in building rental, production setup, flying guys in and hotels (I'm not actually sure that Impact pays these bills for the wrestlers & crew, but I think they do).

A lot of those will cost say 1000 for three days (ONO, 4 Impacts, 4 Xplosions, or 1500 for six days. (2 ONOS, 8 Impacts, 8 Xplosions). I have no idea how much they save this way--the 1000 and 1500 are made up, but they keep doing it, so I assume it's cheaper this way.

Also by doing this, you could make more money if you go to a different location every tapings and do a weekend worth of tapings instead of doing a week worth.

TNA was never able to make any significant revenue from ticket sales (or frankly from anything except TV rights fees). Impact will have a hard time doing so.

They should also stop doing those one night only ppv since they're losing money on them anyway since nobody is buying them and they have no impact on what going on during the tv shows.

I've wondered for a long time why they bother with the One NIght Onlys. At first I thought it was because the contracts with the PPV providers were ironclad, so it was cheaper to produce PPV no one watched than to break the contract. But they've been doing ONOs for about five years now--those contracts must have been up for renewal/cancellation at some point.

I think the ONOs are valuable somehow to the overseas TV partners, who are their major source of revenue.

If they want to do more ppv, just take the tv special they do every month and put them back on ppv and charge a small fee for them maybe 20 or 25$, that way you can actually make money on the product instead on spending money that you're not going to see back.

TNA was never able to get people to pay money for the product consistently.

In the end, I feel like they need to change strategy as far as their tv tapings are concern because what they are doing right isn't working for them at all, they might save money by doing more taping all at once but if they go on the road with the tapings, they Will lose all the money they are saving by doing this since nobody will go to a wrestling event during the week as proven by the Ottawa tapings,

They're continuing their long tradition of existence. The doors stay open, at least for a while.

 

[FromGlasgow]

I think the 2 months in advance creates loads of problems, If anything major happens it always leaks out so towards the end of the 2 months even I'm bored of seeing it as I'm watching things I heard about I know its only 2 months but it feels like I heard about it a year ago.

 

[TDFG]

When I got into watching TNA (as it was) they were taping 3 week schedules. If your a company taping on a 6 week schedule then your future is bleak, if ECIII, Lashley & Eddie Edwards are all leaving come February then they may as well just pull the plug.

Taping more regularly is one thing, having a decimated roster with nothing unique or 'must watch' stuff on your TV show is just as bad.

Impact has been on life support for some time now, I think 2018 might be the end.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It probably would if the bottom line of the company was anything approaching healthy, but the problem is that money has been its biggest issue for years. As has been pointed out, there's a never ending battle to cut costs and it's pretty much impossible for them to operate any way other than with the current format. A lot of talent has been leaving the company for a while now and it's because they're simply not making enough money; that'll probably be what happens when the contracts of wrestlers like Lashley run out. TNA/Impact, whatever, can no longer afford the sort of guaranteed deals that the bigger names in the company had, which means they'll be heading back to a per appearance deal most likely.

In some ways, however, that might be a blessing in disguise as the company has an opportunity to get back to its roots to some degree. Maybe the best thing they can do is to go back to where 95% of the roster is made up of mostly unknown indie talent who aren't big enough stars to command big money. Will it help grow the company? It's possible, though it'll take years and a lot of work to get back to where they were just 5 years ago and I don't know that viewership will be any worse when you consider the show only draws probably 230,000 to 300,000 viewers, and the 300,000 is for a particularly strong show, so it's not exactly like the bigger names they have now are delivering big numbers.

Simply put, they're just doing the best they can with the limited resources they've got. For a lot of years, that was how the company operated until Dixie Carter started flushing millions upon millions of dollars down the toilet with one bad decision after another. It may not be entirely fair to put the blame all on her, but she deserves most of it as she controlled the company checkbook until Mom stepped in, though it was too little too late by then.

 

[Vintage Punk]

They have to fix the front office and payroll first. They are a mess the way the company is run as evident by this past year.

They need a mix of new guys and established talent to go along with compelling storylines in order to get viewership and merchandise sales up. Then once they do that they need to get on a bigger tv network. A Spike tv deal like how Bellator is the alternative to UFC would give them a wider audience to showcase their wrestlers.

All of this starts with how their business is run. You can't retain talents and sign other established talents from indies or away from WWE and present a quality product that will help attract a better tv deal if you don't have your money situation right. If you as a wrestler, who had at least a recognizable name, knew wrestlers with that company who are barely being paid or not receiving their checks when they are supposed to because of financial problems, why would you sign with them.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

I feel like Anthem didn't realize how bad the situation was when they bought the company from Panda Energy. They only saw that the ratings we're up a little bit and that it was one of their highest rated show on the fight network and they wanted to keep it alive. Then they bought it but the problem was that billy corgan who was one of the main reason the product felt fresh again, wasn't with the company anymore because he got screwed over by Dixie. Then they tried to renegotiate some of the bigger contracts by low balling some of their talents like Drew Galloway and the hardy's and they left i went to WWE where they are really happy right now.

Then to make matter worst, they brought in Jarrett because he was able to sell them a bill of good and they bought it because of his history with the company and look what happened. Jarrett got release because of his personal demons showing up again. So they we'Re screwed again.

Things are so bad at Anthem right now that they had to lay off employees from the fight network because they don'T have enough money to run Impact anymore so they take money from they're other company.

I feel right now that the best thing for Anthem right now, would to try and get somebody that can turn the product around at minimal cost or just sell everything to whoever wants to own the video library because at the rate they are going, it's not just Impact that will go under but i fear that the fight network might go under as well.

 

[johnbragg]

When I got into watching TNA (as it was) they were taping 3 week schedules. If your a company taping on a 6 week schedule then your future is bleak, if ECIII, Lashley & Eddie Edwards are all leaving come February then they may as well just pull the plug.

I think you're overrating the name value of EC3, Lashley and Edwards. We've seen much bigger names walk out the door of the Impact Zone many times, and it never mattered much. Even losing AJ Styles didn't really hit until Spike dropped them.

Impact has been on life support for some time now, I think 2018 might be the end.

This has to be true sooner or later, but we've said it so many times and been wrong.

I feel like Anthem didn't realize how bad the situation was when they bought the company from Panda Energy.

That's quite likely. I wonder if they even asked themselves why they were fighting so hard to keep TNA out of Billy Corgan's hands. IF it was just about having programming for the Fight NEtwork, why not let Corgan have majority control?

Or maybe they quickly realized that Corgan was difficult to work with as a partner?

I feel right now that the best thing for Anthem right now, would to try and get somebody that can turn the product around at minimal cost

The problem is, who is that guy, and how do you know? Nobody's done it before, except maybe for a couple of guys who are or were working at Ring of Honor. And ROH was usually running out of money before Sinclair bought them out.

...at the rate they are going, it's not just Impact that will go under but i fear that the fight network might go under as well.

That's a very live possibility. When Anthem bought Impact, there was the general impression that since the Aspers had been in control of a billion-dollar Canadian media empire, that the Aspers were billionaires or close to it. When the truth is the Aspers were using their money to leverage a lot of other-peoples-money, and that collapsed on them. The Aspers don't have near-billionaire money, and the mega-millions they do have they aren't going to pour down the rabbit hole of pro wrestling.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

The issue of losing talent isn't one of losing specific individuals. It's in the sum value of the losses, because they tend to occur in bunches.

Any company can take the hit of losing a top competitor to free agency and survive it just fine, but to take successive hits the way Impact does without suffering a knockout loss is just incredible.

 

[GhettoV1]

I bet Anthem has the WWE's number near by to call them to sell Impact Wrestling.