The situation with Destination America and pro wrestling took a unique turn on 5/27 with the announcement that Ring of Honor would be starting on the station on 6/3, airing at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
The Wednesday time slot would be on the same night as TNA. TNA will continue the planned airing from 9-11 p.m. TNA will retain a Friday night replay, moving to Midnight to 2 a.m. ROH will have an 11 p.m. replay before the TNA replay which would indicate that Destination America is favoring ROH.
The ROH deal has been in negotiations well before the Discovery Network sent out its memo on or around 5/11 that announced that they would be canceling TNA programming at the end of September, although the deal itself was just signed this week. However, the announcement date of 5/27 was scheduled for a few weeks, as the deal had been agreed to in principle but both sides had kept it secretive.
TNA had scheduled a conference call with talent on 5/27 to discuss the story in last week's Observer. Originally, when the story broke, TNA had said it would discuss it at the next television tapings, which were more than a month away.
Later, they sent a message to talent stating: "It has come to our attention that several internet news sources have falsely attributed statements to TNA, its executives and broadcasting partner. These false statements constitute defamation and if necessary we will seek all legal remedies available to us."
TNA was not aware of the negotiations with ROH by Destination America, nor of the contract signing until Destination America announced it on its Twitter account just hours before their talent meeting. Other sources indicated Destination America had also had talks with Jeff Jarrett in recent weeks, who seems like the odd man out.
The ROH deal with Destination America is short-term, expiring on 12/2, so for now, this is something of a experiment, but if it works or if ROH can even gain potentially half of TNA's viewers then it's highly probable that it will become permanent. The ROH show that airs in syndication in Sinclair Broadcasting stations and a few other syndicated stations around the country on weekend time slots, which will also air on Sunday nights on NESN as part of a new deal, would then air the following Wednesday night on Destination America.
The NESN deal closed at the time same, to far less publicity. The ROH syndicated that airs over the weekend will air at 8 p.m. Eastern on the regular feed of NESN (New England Sports Network), as opposed to the non-New England feed that ROH had just started airing on a few weeks ago. That deal goes into effect on 6/7.
As a sports network that carries local live sports programming, including the Boston Red Sox, the show won't air in that slot when there is a conflict. I'm not sure in those weeks if they'll give it a new slot or just not air it.
NESN is a major sports station in the Boston market, which ROH previously didn't have television in. That NESN feed is on DirecTV and Dish Network, although it's on a premium sports tier in both. NESN is available in four million homes in the New England area and five million more currently have the sports tiers between DirecTv and Dish that also carry the station. This is still a big deal to ROH and had it not been for the Destination America deal being finalized they would have promoted it more, but obviously Destination America took precedence.
The upside of ROH is that it would cost Destination America less money than TNA, but they would be able to, in theory, maintain the ratings that wrestling delivers. Or they could decide that the synergy for the two products will boost numbers enough to not cancel TNA as planned. As noted last week, there are a ton of moving pieces and this story is very much in progress.
Dixie Carter tried to claim the stories reported were false, and that they expected to be on Destination America in 2016, but then deflected questions about whether or not they contractually could be canceled at the end of September.
The wrestlers at the meeting were not happy because they felt overall Carter was being evasive, and also it was hard to buy the idea that she was presenting that adding ROH to Destination America was to their benefit. The keys to the talent question and answer period is that talent complained that they wanted better lines of communications. MVP in particular was out spoken during the conference call and seemed very agitated about not being told of ROH's move to Destination America, even though he should probably direct his issue toward them and not TNA management.
TNA does have a multi-year deal with the Destination America, but the station has an out clause at the end of the current television season, which is late August, which is the scheduled time as of now for the cancellation of Impact Wrestling.
She also stated that all announced dates are still on the schedule and there are no changes in plans.
Two weeks ago, the Discovery Network sent out a memo stating: "Destination America is not renewing TNA Wrestling next year. While the ratings were strong, the audience was not large enough to justify the program investment. We plan to honor the current contract and continue to air original episodes of TNA Wrestling on Friday nights through the end of the third quarter 2015. When the up-front rate card is released, the Friday night anthology title will now be called 'American Tales,' which will be a combination of Paranormal and Americana programming. I hope this is good news given all of the advertisers that included TNA on their DNA list."
The DNA list is for when advertisers buy time on the station as a whole instead of just a specific show, the DNA, or Do Not Advertise list, is something sponsors list for shows they specifically don't want their ads on.
We had contacted Carter as soon as we received the information that the show was being canceled for a comment or if she knew anything different. A week later, Destination America announced, with no warning and after a month of television had been taped with references to Friday's, that the show would be moved to Wednesdays. We had also contacted Carter at that point asking if the move to Wednesdays meant a change at the Discovery Network. At the time, the people who had received the original memo had not heard of any changes in plans for TNA.
So Carter was well aware for more than one week of the issue and that a story was likely to be written and did not comment. She did not make an attempt to clarify it, or give her slant on it. But then company officials Bob Ryder and Billy Corgan played attack the messenger. At no point did the company actually address anything specific in last week's issue, but seemed trying to confuse the issue and make it like this horrible guy was spreading lies about the company.
Ryder wrote: "For almost 13 years some people have predicted we were about to go out of business. It's no more true today than it was then."
Of course, nowhere in the story did I write TNA was going out of business. I even made it clear the story was still ongoing, only that the Discovery Network was planning on canceling TNA programming.
Corgan, a rock star as the key man in the "Smashing Pumpkins" band and a long time wrestling fan, wrote, "It wouldn't be so bad if the whole truth was being reported and the person reporting wasn't being worked himself by a sloppy angle."
In other words, he was claiming there was an angle going on, which can only be presumed that TNA creative is doing a storyline where they are about to lose television, and channel the spirit of Brian Pillman. The only way this could be an angle would be to tell the Discovery Network to release a memo, tell their key management officials, and alert their advertising department, for an angle. Well, if that's the case, they should be proud that they managed to get the angle out. The response was identical to last year, when Vince Russo accidentally sent a memo that was meant for Mike Tenay, with bullet points on how to announce the show, and pushed the wrong button on his computer and it went to wrestling reporter Mike Johnson of PW Insider. Johnson then revealed that it was proof that Russo was working for TNA, which TNA had attempted to keep a secret because Spike TV, its broadcast partner, had made it clear they didn't want to have anything to do with Russo. It was right after that came out that Spike informed Carter they were not renewing at the end of their contract, but also made it clear they would keep that information quiet to allow her to have better leverage to make a new deal, and also because it doesn't serve the station well to announce so far in advance that they have a lame duck show.
Corgan claimed to have read the story, saying, "For your info, I did read your highly irresponsible piece. And as much as I love Vinny Ru, this is a different situation." The Vinny Ru comment had to do with me saying to Corgan his excuse was identical to the one Russo used when Johnson broke his story, and that Johnson was a dummy who had been easily worked by an angle.
Corgan clearly didn't read the Observer last week, most notably the part about himself, because when it was then brought up, he clammed up.
While Carter avoided mentioning my name, Corgan went off on me in specific at the conference call.
Similarly, Discovery was not planning on announcing TNA's not being renewed publicly, although the station, a week after the story broke, had still not commented on the future or publicly given TNA a vote of confidence.
ROH's syndication deal with Sinclair Network is mainly in mid-sized markets, and this gives them television exposure in both some of their key live event markets like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, but also in major markets like Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. ROH had been in talks with Spike TV about doing specials on the station but Spike, which had confirmed the talks, had told us that nothing was imminent when it came to a doing a pro wrestling deal. Last I heard Spike were interested because of how ROH presents its wrestling, where it's more athletic and curved toward being an actual sport rather than a soap opera like TNA presents its product.
With its syndicated package, Destination America and NESN, ROH will clearly be the No. 2 wrestling company in the U.S. as far as exposure goes, unless Lucha Underground clears Univision, it is the most accessible wrestling product in the United States.
Joe Koff confirmed to us that the first four ROH television shows on Destination America will be from the 5/16 taping in Toronto, featuring New Japan talent. The 6/3 show will have Kushida vs. Will Ferrara, Silas Young vs. Takaaki Watanabe, Moose vs. Colby Corino and Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Donovan Dijak & J Diesel. It's actually from a marquee standpoint, a rather weak lineup for a debut show.
However, the second show features Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian vs. Kyle O'Reilly in a handicap match for the tag titles, Jushin Liger vs. Dalton Castle and IWGP tag champs Matt Taven & Michael Bennett vs. Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows. The third hour, which will serve as the Go Home show for ROH's 6/19 PPV from New York, features the contract signing for the Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal double title match, as well as a great Hiroshi Tanahashi & Liger vs. ACH & Matt Sydal bout. The 6/24 show, which will be the lead-in to TNA's go home almost live show, will be the best of the taping, with Roderick Strong vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and The Young Bucks & A.J. Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada & Rocky Romero & Baretta. It would seem that ROH tactically scheduled this as that final go-home on paper is an incredibly stacked show and features marquee stars from New-Japan Pro Wrestling, which will totally steal Jeff Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling thunder from January as now people can watch the likes of Okada and Nakamura on TV.
Joe Koff said that the TV taping for the following months TV, which will be the 6/20 taping, would be pushed as their true TV taping which is why a lot of their big names such as AJ Styles, The Young Bucks and Samoa Joe have been booked.
There are many different ways this story can go. If ROH proves to do equal numbers as TNA, while costing far less, that would affect a future decision. But TNA does have bigger names mainstream and better production values, plus its big edge is their show airs first on Destination America while ROH will have aired both in syndication and on NESN before it hits the station.
Logically, the ROH numbers should not be as good as the TNA numbers. Will the difference be large enough to where this makes TNA look good and saves them? It is also very possible that the combination of both will help the numbers for both. But, as noted in the memo, there still is the advertising issue. If ROH can come close to consistently matching TNA's numbers it is safe as assume TNA are in danger as again ROH takes a lot less to produce, Destination America could pull the money they invest in TNA, put even half into ROH to help where necessary and ROH could match TNA for production values while being largely produced by Sinclair Broadcasting Group.
ROH is planning on doing PPV shows on Friday nights from this point forward, so the go-home show that airs over the weekend, and again on Wednesday, would build do the PPV. If the show was on Sunday night, then the Wednesday show on Destination America would be hyping a show that had already taken place.
Another big question, not answered at press time, revolves around Samoa Joe and the WWE.
Those at WWE had of late said that they were not interested in any TNA talent when their contract was up (Samoa Joe was talked with and has a deal so it's a rule of sorts, but not an unbreakable one) because they didn't want talent already exposed nationally on cable. WWE has always considered that ROH talent did not fall into that category. Many wrestlers of late have opted to go to ROH instead of TNA, even at better money offers. There are a number of different reasons why, but a major one for younger talent was the feeling that going to TNA means it's very difficult to go to WWE, the ultimate goal of almost everyone. ROH, given the success of Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, Cesaro, C.M. Punk and to a lesser extent Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, was considered a route to WWE, as well as to New Japan.
Samoa Joe agreed to work for ROH for televised events and future dates when it did not have national cable clearance. Joe had only been announced for the 6/20 TV taping but I'd confirmation that he was also going to be on the 8/22 show at MCU Park in Brooklyn, the night before Summerslam which ROH is going to promote as a big show, "Death Before Dishonor" iPPV on 7/24 and both nights of "All Star Extravaganza" on 9/18 & 9/19, plus TV tapings and a couple of house shows. The entire dynamic has now changed. And because this change was so sudden, at press time, nobody seemed to have any definitive answers, on either ROH or WWE's side. Joe was planned to feature on ROH television for the New York TV taping on 6/20 but right now nobody, possibly even Joe, knows.
