Declining Ratings: Coincidence or Booking?

[Zeven_Zion]

It is certainly no coincidence. TNA has had bad booking throughout their company history. Although since guys like Hogan, Bischoff, and Pritchard have joined the quality has become even worse than before. Of course, their intentions for joining the company were clearly selfish and out of greed and not to help. TNA needs to rid themselves of those types to advance.

If it's no coincidence and this is dependent on the booking alone, why are RAW's ratings three times higher? Is WWE's booking three times better? You can argue it's a little better, but enough to triple TNA's ratings? Why does this logic seem so illogical to me.

People act as if TNA was pulling 2.0's for years and now it dipped to 0.9's. The ratings have always sucked and why we focus on it now as opposed to the billion times it's happened before is mystifying to me.

 

[three count bout]

General disinterest in wrestling is probably the biggest culprit coupled with IW's lack of follow through when building stars up i.e Aries. I think the A&8's storyline just got an injection with Ray as the leader, but I think it's going to need a top level babyface to challenge him and make this interesting. Someone who can speak passionately about why they have to stop them i.e not Hardy. Impact just has to try there best to make compelling tv and not quit on it.

 

[IT Factor]

If it's no coincidence and this is dependent on the booking alone, why are RAW's ratings three times higher? Is WWE's booking three times better? You can argue it's a little better, but enough to triple TNA's ratings? Why does this logic seem so illogical to me.

Nice to see you again too, Zion There are a number of reasons why ratings increase and decrease. Mainly, the interest in pro wrestling & entertainment is not what it once was. Another great reason is because TNA has failed to create an identity for themselves that make viewers take notice of them. People always throw in that WWE's ratings are higher, but they have been around forever. Viewers will tune in because it has always been there and until TNA can change their system, it will remain so.

People act as if TNA was pulling 2.0's for years and now it dipped to 0.9's. The ratings have always sucked and why we focus on it now as opposed to the billion times it's happened before is mystifying to me.

I have never said or even implied that TNA ever had great ratings. That was an assumption, a faulty one at that. What I will point out here is that TNA had consistent ratings before the trio of doom[Hogan, Bischoff, and Pritchard] entered the company. It is obvious that you are very pessimistic about TNA, which is fine. But that does beg the question; why even post in the TNA forum if you feel so negatively about Impact Wrestling?

 

[Rayne]

People act as if TNA was pulling 2.0's for years and now it dipped to 0.9's. The ratings have always sucked and why we focus on it now as opposed to the billion times it's happened before is mystifying to me.

Oh, that's easy. Because a few years ago, they invested a shitload of money into the company (unless you believe that all the people they hired are working pro bono, and all the technological upgrades they invested in from 2010-11 came from the Digital Fairy, like some people on this board seem to think), and it hasn't shown up in the #1 metric for measuring a television program's success. The whole idea of investing money into the company is to get more people to watch, and that isn't happening, calling into question the sense in further investment in TNA. It's probably the biggest ongoing story in professional wrestling, but most fans have an attention span of roughly three months.

Seriously, that mystifies you, or were you just using the figure of speech?

 

[Zeven_Zion]

Oh, that's easy. Because a few years ago, they invested a shitload of money into the company (unless you believe that all the people they hired are working pro bono, and all the technological upgrades they invested in from 2010-11 came from the Digital Fairy, like some people on this board seem to think), and it hasn't shown up in the #1 metric for measuring a television program's success. The whole idea of investing money into the company is to get more people to watch, and that isn't happening, calling into question the sense in further investment in TNA. It's probably the biggest ongoing story in professional wrestling, but most fans have an attention span of roughly three months.

Seriously, that mystifies you, or were you just using the figure of speech?

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm not, but this thread is regarding the DECLINING RATINGS, not investments, not who TNA hired, not who TNA is having on the payroll to do a better job. We talk about booking, we talk about marketing and so on.

You can always argue that the slew of individuals TNA hired a few years back and their failure to deliver is related to these frozen ratings, and you would be absolutely correct. However, here's the kicker. TNA continues to hire new prospects day by day. They have hired people prior to Hogan's arrival and the one main purpose of every signed dotted line was (among a plethora of other things) to improve the ratings.

If you think TNA has blasted a shit-load of money on people only once in their tenure, you're lying to yourself. This is the only occasion that was publicized. Before this you had your Sting, you had your Angle, you had your Christian Cage. Before that you've had Russo and lesser WWE/ECW/WCW rejects like Raven, Rhyno or even guys like Foley.

Even if we twist the whole thing in the direction you do, it's still not newsworthy. Again, TNA's ratings have always been low DESPITE anything they do. Despite who they hire, who they pay, who they show on the air, how they book and how they present themselves.

The ratings not spiking even though they hired guys like Hogan and Bischoff was barely news a year ago. Now? It's just a fact. Does this mean, then, that they should fire them? Sure, if they want to be stupid. But if they fire Hogan and Bischoff they might as well fire AJ Styles, Sting, Angle and everyone but the Knockouts because they haven't done jack shit to improve the ratings either.

All of this goes to solidify my original "theory" that it's not the damn product. Whether it's audience's perception of the company, or how they're marketed or whatever - I don't know. But if it was ONLY or at least mainly the product, we'd actually see some clear contrast in ratings through different periods of TNA's existence. All we see are some 0.something differences.

The only time TNA's ratings have shifted dramatically and changed permanently is when they did something with their format like getting on Spike or going to two hours. These two changes are directly correlated to TNA's popularity and growth and they're the only changes that have shown permanent effects on their ratings. Moving to Mondays also impacted their ratings in a very negative way. More than any stupid-ass storyline they've ran. Pick one, there's plenty. Big shifts in the way they do business seem to move things around.

Not Bobby Roode as Champion, not a crack ****e messing with Styles, not a great Knockouts division.

TNA's product is just fine, something else is rotten and I don't know what that is. Something tells me TNA doesn't either. Going semi-live and on the road was a great step in the right direction. From this point on their only hope is moving to a better network where they will be exposed to a larger audience, managed and marketed better. Until then, believe me, the ratings will stay in the 0.9-1.1 ratio regardless of what happens or who they hire.

 

[newwaveknight]

Well one thing is for sure, the Bellator partnership did nothing for TNA. What they have failed to do is grow their audience, and Spike TV hasn't helped at all. It's time to get Impact on a new TV network. MTV is clearly the best option for growing the audience, and with the right promotion all of the current fans would tune in on the new channel. Smackdown hopped networks a few times before landing on Syfy where it holds solid weekly ratings. Impact could do well on TBS or TNT, if Turner decided to give wrestling another chance. USA network dropped Raw before, and welcomed them back. Any way they can, the next step is to abandon Spike, before it's dropped by more providers.

Do you mean Turner as in the man or his company? If it were up to the man, WCW would still be in business and TNA would have never existed. Ted was a HUGE fan of pro-wrestling and vowed that, as long as he was in charge, wrestling would ALWAYS have a spot on his network (I'm pretty much plagiarizing The Death of WCW). The problem is that WCW's ratings sunk so low from 1999-2001 that the people who were running Time Warner then decided to do away with it. If TNA currently (or ever) had ratings that could compete with the WWE, no doubt they'd be ready to put TNA on their station.

 

[SpecialFNK]

Do you mean Turner as in the man or his company? If it were up to the man, WCW would still be in business and TNA would have never existed. Ted was a HUGE fan of pro-wrestling and vowed that, as long as he was in charge, wrestling would ALWAYS have a spot on his network (I'm pretty much plagiarizing The Death of WCW). The problem is that WCW's ratings sunk so low from 1999-2001 that the people who were running Time Warner then decided to do away with it. If TNA currently (or ever) had ratings that could compete with the WWE, no doubt they'd be ready to put TNA on their station.

not really accurate. it was Time Warner merging with AOL, and the new group not wanting wrestling.
this from wikipedia.

As 2000 came to a close, a number of potential buyers for WCW were rumored to show interest in the company. Ted Turner, however, was still in charge of Time Warner prior to the final merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2001, and most offers were rejected. Eric Bischoff, working with Fusient Media Ventures, made a bid to acquire the company in January 2001 (shortly following the AOL/Time Warner merger), and it appeared that WCW would continue.

One of the primary backers in the WCW deal backed out, however, leaving Fusient to take that offer off the table while it attempted to bring a new deal around. In the meantime, the World Wrestling Federation began speaking to the new AOL Time Warner about acquiring the WCW brand. Jamie Kellner was handed control over the Turner Broadcasting division, and deemed WCW wrestling to be out of line with their image. As a result, WCW programming was canceled on both TBS and TNT, leaving Vince McMahon's company, which at the time had an exclusive deal with Viacom, free to acquire the trademarks, video libraries and a few contracts.

 

[New Hot Fed]

Did you just claim to know buyrates information? Dude, I knew you were full of shit but this is just silly. You're better than that. Or so I thought.

You've heard this before but I'll say it again. TNA is a private company, there is NO WAY for the scum sheets to have access to this information. If they did, they would have definite numbers. You can choose to trust them, but that's idiotic. What's even more idiotic is basing your argument on bullshit information. Unless a credible institution released the number they have no business in any argument. Period. You can look them up, you may think it might be close to the truth but you use them as rock solid fact, and that's stupid.

"Roode vs Storm got the biggest buyrate". Not only is the buyrates information fictional, but even if it wasn't you have no way of knowing what "sold" the Pay-Per-View unless you did freakin' research on it. Even TNA doesn't know what sells their Pay-Per-Views, not down to which match at least.

Moreover, spare me the coulda woulda shoulda. 6 months is PLENTY of time to draw SOME viewers in. We saw none, in fact we saw drops in viewership. You can't run the same shit for a whole year and expect there to be no benefit within that first year, only after. If it didn't happen in 6 months, it won't happen. That's 6 PPVs, dude. Over 20 shows. Forget about it.

In the end, you pawn off a fictional scenario as something that WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NO MATTER WHAT but somehow TNA missed out on it because obviously you know something they don't, then you go on and you pull the buyrates bullshit based on the always trustworthy dirt sheet reports who just a few days ago reported the latest TNA rating and wrote that 0.98 is lower than 0.93, show an obvious lack of grammar in almost every column and every post and despite having access to buyrate information never give you a specific number but a rounded up one (credibility out the ass), and in general you just proved to everyone that your opinion is more useless than a WWE RAW review by yours truly.

Give me a break, man. Here I thought you were going somewhere logical with this.

Actually it's pretty easy to find the ratings and buyrates even if TNA is a private company. You would have to be pretty stubborn to pretend the numbers are not right just cause it doesn't fit your agenda.

You have shown your true face, buddy, you are all hot air.

Storm vs Roode had the biggest buyrate of the year in 2012, even if your former WCW/WWF-loving stars heart can't take it. But you know what? I'm not gonna reserve all the credit to Roode and Storm, it was also Bischoff and his booking team that did things right there. Their first half of 2012 booking-wise was incredibly sound. For the first time in ages, TNA had their shit together. If they had continued on the path it would have been great. But they had to create another bogus invasion group and screw everything up.

Also if it was so easy to help buyrates and ratings in a couple months, then wrestling companies would turn they stuff around pretty quickly but it's not the case. History shows that it takes years to really see a bump. As I showed you with the nWo phenom.

And then saying the TNA product is fine and that ratings sucks cause of some mystical "something is rotten and I don't know what it is" is pretty pathetic, you can't have your head in the sand more than it is. EVERYBODY HATES THE ACES & 8s STORYLINE. People can't stand all these old WWE/WCW rejects and jobbers.

 

[New Hot Fed]

Do you mean Turner as in the man or his company? If it were up to the man, WCW would still be in business and TNA would have never existed. Ted was a HUGE fan of pro-wrestling and vowed that, as long as he was in charge, wrestling would ALWAYS have a spot on his network (I'm pretty much plagiarizing The Death of WCW). The problem is that WCW's ratings sunk so low from 1999-2001 that the people who were running Time Warner then decided to do away with it. If TNA currently (or ever) had ratings that could compete with the WWE, no doubt they'd be ready to put TNA on their station.

It has nothing to do with ratings that WCW went away. They were pulling 2.0s on average. It's that the executives didn't care about wrestling.

 

[Rayne]

It has nothing to do with ratings that WCW went away. They were pulling 2.0s on average. It's that the executives didn't care about wrestling.

Ugh. No. Wrong. It's because they were pulling 2.0's, but spending 4.0 money to get there. Ratings aren't the final piece of the puzzle; it's ratings versus expenses.

Any other place in the world, you point to a company with falling ratings, declining gate receipts, rapid turnover in management, a hideously low final sales price and few hopes for a resurrection, and people say "wow, that company was sure being run poorly". In professional wrestling land, it always has to be this massive conspiracy orchestrated by evil people rubbing their hands together with a "muahahahah", determined to sink your favorite form of entertainment because they just don't like it.

WCW failed because they were a poorly run company who paid little attention to their accounting. They went through classic growth, bubble, and bust phases, similar to millions of other companies whose spending outstripped their growth, but not their borrowing capacity. Why do people always insist upon finding these convoluted answers to why WCW failed when the answer is as simple as it can get?


Zeven, the answer is "TNA is not putting on a product which is encouraging more people to watch". Nothing rotten about it, it's actually incredibly simple.

 

[Zeven_Zion]

Actually it's pretty easy to find the ratings and buyrates even if TNA is a private company. You would have to be pretty stubborn to pretend the numbers are not right just cause it doesn't fit your agenda.

You have shown your true face, buddy, you are all hot air.

Storm vs Roode had the biggest buyrate of the year in 2012, even if your former WCW/WWF-loving stars heart can't take it. But you know what? I'm not gonna reserve all the credit to Roode and Storm, it was also Bischoff and his booking team that did things right there. Their first half of 2012 booking-wise was incredibly sound. For the first time in ages, TNA had their shit together. If they had continued on the path it would have been great. But they had to create another bogus invasion group and screw everything up.

Also if it was so easy to help buyrates and ratings in a couple months, then wrestling companies would turn they stuff around pretty quickly but it's not the case. History shows that it takes years to really see a bump. As I showed you with the nWo phenom.

And then saying the TNA product is fine and that ratings sucks cause of some mystical "something is rotten and I don't know what it is" is pretty pathetic, you can't have your head in the sand more than it is. EVERYBODY HATES THE ACES & 8s STORYLINE. People can't stand all these old WWE/WCW rejects and jobbers.

If it's pretty easy, show them to me. If you say it's easy, I assume you already found a source. You already know the exact numbers for most Pay-Per-Views in 2013 or earlier. Not estimates, not dirt sheet reports with "anonymous sources". Real facts. So, show me the PPV Buyrates.

In your next reply, I would like for you to offer reliable sources with solid information on this year's PPV Sales. I believe myself as well as the rest of this forum would be glad to finally get their hands on such information so any and all arguments are put to rest. Clearly, you found them before we could so please share with the rest of the boys.

I can't fucking wait for this.

Also, please refrain from generalizing your bullshit and half-witted opinions to the entire population. It's not like you're known for your brilliant mind.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

People act as if TNA was pulling 2.0's for years and now it dipped to 0.9's. The ratings have always sucked and why we focus on it now as opposed to the billion times it's happened before is mystifying to me.

It's true that it's definitely been a while since ratings were generally a topic in the TNA forums. If memory serves, it was very frequently discussed after the 1/4/10 episode that featured Hulk Hogan's debut and going head to head with Raw. Initially, the talk centered on how TNA had set a record that night for the largest audience in its history.

As the weeks & months progressed though, the ratings plummeted. It got to the point where TNA was only drawing somewhere in the neighborhood of 700,000 to 750,000 viewers before they ultimately moved back to Thursday nights. People would generally talk about laying the lame onto someone or something while stating what they think could fix things.

Generally speaking, ratings don't really get all that much discussion anymore unless the numbers start dropping significantly. Thursday's episode, according to tvbythenumbers.com, only drew 1.104 million viewers, which is the lowest since the 10/4/12 episode drew 1.058 million. People were expecting the 4/11 show, which was heavily hyped & built, to pop a bigger than usual rating for the show but, instead, it drew a 0.9 rating with 1.2 million viewers. For much of this year prior to that, IW was regularly drawing in the 1.3 to 1.45 million range. I remember reading a couple of episodes drew over 1.6 million earlier this year. In terms of the numbers, TNA has lost a lot of momentum in a relatively short amount of time.

Sometimes, there's no real reason why shows don't draw as big as expected. It might simply be just a general lack of interest. For instance, the post WM Raw only drew somewhere in the 4.6-4.65 million range, which is good viewership for WWE but I think pretty much everyone was expecting it to be higher. Just like the 4/11 episode of IW, there was no special competition on that night. No big sporting events, no television specials, no award shows, etc. Just not as many tuned in as was thought or expected.

As for why TNA's ratings are dropping right now, it's all just a guess that the current stuff going on simply isn't drawing in new viewers while more regular viewers are either disinterested or growing disinterested in it. At the same time, how many people didn't watch the show this past Thursday but recorded it via DVR? I don't usually run across articles very often talking about DVR numbers. Whenever I do run across them, they seem to imply that the DVR usually adds somewhere, on average, 200,000-250,000 viewers who record IW on DVR and 400,000-450,000 on average for Raw. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It usually takes several weeks after an episode airs before sites report those numbers.

 

[bab2121]

Hey guys, here is a link to the jokers wild pay per view last night. Wanted to post in own thread, but I guess it wont let me because I am new. Enjoy!

http://www.1channel.ch/external.php...8ydzFoMDY=&domain=c2hhcmVzaXguY29t&loggedin=0