TNA announced, first in a conference call to talent its new multi-year deal with Destination America, which is part of the Discovery Communications chain of stations.
The deal goes into effect in January with what is being termed the “World Premiere.”
While a huge step down from Spike, the promotion told talent that it’s a positive, claiming the Discovery Network is behind them and will be promoting them in a way the company has never been promoted before. The skeptical thought was if Discovery was behind them to a strong degree, they would have been put on The Discovery Network, which has full cable clearance, instead of a show in just over half the cable homes. While there is a claim that Destination America is available in approximately 52 million homes, on many systems it would be necessary to get an upgraded tier.
The time slot and date were not released. Those in the company were told that they believed it would be the same Wednesday night at 9 p.m. time slot, but that it wasn’t confirmed, but that the show would start airing most likely the first week of January.
Originally TNA was going to do a live show on 1/7 from the Manhattan Center, but those plans are believed to have changed. The talent was told that they would hear within a few days when the next taping would be. The plan, which is not finalized, was to tape sometime in mid-to-late December. New York may still be the destination for the first set of tapings, but that was not confirmed. The Manhattan Center is costly to rent even for one night, $80,000 is a lot of money to give away for a building that only holds 800 people. This is one of the effects of no longer having Spike's money backing them.
The deal with Destination America will include far more program hours than Spike. There will be a replay of Impact that airs every week, plus specials and secondary TV series. One idea talked about was doing an American version of the British Boot Camp series.
TNA is expected to be flagship programming on the station. In addition, Discovery Communications was given international broadcasting rights to all programming in certain regions. The belief is that TNA will retain its rights in the markets it has already developed, like the U.K. and Australia, but in markets that TNA has no programming, Discovery will have the syndication rights.
The belief is that with the deal in place, John Gaburick will now be able to open up negotiations with talent whose contracts have expired or will expire before January. Among the names who fit into that category are Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe, Eddie Edwards, Bully Ray, Davey Richards, Gail Kim and Mike Tenay.
In its release announcing the deal, the flagship stars TNA was listing were Jeff Hardy, Bobby Roode, Angle, Bobby Lashley and Kim. Lashley becomes interesting because it was one thing for him to have the joint contract when both TNA and Bellator were on Spike, but it was another thing when they are different companies. A question becomes whether his MMA drawing power would decline if TNA was not promoting the shows and his appearances, which they wouldn’t be any longer.
It is not known the rights fees which would be the key aspect of how much budget cutting would or wouldn’t be needed and what kind of contracts could be offered. They aren't getting as much money as they were from Spike. I've been told by a few people close to the situation they're not even getting half. They were hoping to hold out for a better deal as TNA have some assumption that a top network wants their show, but the fact remains wrestling just isn't appealing to mainstream network stations in this climate.
“Our partnership with TNA Wrestling will officially come to an end with our last telecast on 12/24,” said Spike TV President Kevin Kay. “Dixie Carter and her team have been incredible partners to work with over the past nine years, delivering high-action entertainment and strong ratings. As Spike continues to evolve into a network reaching a broader audience, we continue to look across our schedule to find opportunities to add original scripted and no-scripted programming that appeals to a wider demographic. On behalf of everyone at Spike, we would like to with Dixie and TNA all the best and continued success.”
While Spike made the call months ago to cancel, they attempted to be the best partners they could be on the way out. They kept TNA on the air for three extra months after the contract expired to give them time to broker a new deal. They also would not publicly claim that they had canceled the show, always using the term in public conversation that they were still in negotiations.
Privately, even though the ratings were above the station average, even with the move to Wednesday, and the show had a loyal audience, the ad rates they could charge were an issue. They also wanted programming that wouldn’t be as heavily male-skewed, although wrestling’s percentage of women viewers isn’t all that much different than MMA or kickboxing. It was expressed to me that if TNA was doing the ratings it did a few years back, this call wouldn’t have been made.
But it was a telling time for the industry that a show with a track record of one million viewers per week, a solid prime time number for all but the top tier of cable stations, couldn’t get on a station with full national clearance.
As best we can tell, the most watched show in the history of the station was an April airing of the show Mountain Monsters, which did an 0.8 rating and 473,000 viewers. The station is in roughly half the homes that has Spike, so given that, if every Spike viewer who gets the station switched over, you’re talking 500,000 viewers, and really it would be significantly less, because it’s so much of a less viewed station so it’s not like every person who watched it on Spike is going to move over.
The exposure for the product would likely be in the same ballpark as ROH and would probably stay ahead of Lucha Underground for now. Lucha Underground in a Saturday afternoon time slot wouldn’t be in prime time like TNA will be, but Unimas has far more viewership than Destination America. TNA would have coverage in more places than ROH, but ROH would be on stronger local stations, including network affiliates, while Destination America is a station with minimal viewership. We don't have access to ROH's viewership readings but any time I have asked people within either ROH or their affiliate stations I'm always told that their show does "above and beyond" what they expect. We know that in June 2013 it was averaging 180,000 viewers in Texas alone which is why they now travel to San Antonio three times a year. ROH can be seen on FOX, ABC and CW network affiliates, all very strong stations which would garner good local viewing.
ROH and TNA will now be in direct competition as far as business goes, more-so than ever. ROH has been gradually pushing TNA's position as the #2 wrestling company in the US for the last year and with their business out doing TNA's in almost every category it's not easy to say TNA is #2 anymore. ROH's attendance has been better, their 'Best in the World' PPV debut gained more buyers than TNA's 'Bound for Glory' PPV and that was TNA's biggest show of the year. While TNA will receive more money from ad revenue which will be a big advantage depending on how much programming Destination America give them, ROH is the placeholder for Sinclair Broadcasting. Other than ROH all SBG own is a Sports Network which mostly shows college football. While they're not investing millions its very clear that Sinclair have an investment in ROH and they want it to succeed. This year saw ROH bridge the gap and now the gap is closed, It'll be very interesting to see how ROH reacts to this and how competitive this becomes. TNA always viewed themselves as above ROH, but this year there has been several instances such as running commercials on SBG channels, sending teams of people to hand out fliers at ROH events and trying to sign away top ROH talent that TNA is more aware of ROH's threat to its business than ever.
Nothing was said regarding house shows. TNA no longer has a house show promoter and had let go the people who handled the merchandise. House shows will be more difficult with the smaller audience that would be watching the show, and many markets that TNA had run would have cable systems that don’t get the channel.
The February tapings would be done out of the U.K. as that tour is still on. Right now there is nothing being said about house shows, since they got rid of their promoter, and the people who handle the merchandise, so that gives an indication they’ll mostly just tape TV and try to farm out their talent.
Sources in Destination America were of the belief that the deal was agreed to on 11/12 but people within TNA only grew aware on 11/18.
Destination America airs on Ch. 286 on DirecTV and Ch. 194 on the Dish Network in HD. It’s also on Ch. 168 and 668 on Verizon FiOS, Ch. 315 on Sky Angel, Ch. 1465 (HD) and Ch. 465 (SD) on AT&T U-verse in most markets.
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