you mean WCW, the wrestling company that was actually having better ratings than WWE. of course some could throw out that WCW ended, but that wasn't solely because of booking. there was an ownership change right from the top that did not want wrestling.
2 of the biggest factors are ratings and making money. if Hardy is helping with those I doubt TNA really cares about what image Jeff Hardy has, especially with kids when that's not TNA demographic.
Alright, let's kill this "WCW died because TV execs didn't want wrestling for no good reason" bit. That is a tremendous misconception concocted and promoted by the very people responsible for tanking WCW to avoid viewing themselves as having any blame for WCW's failure. It's a narrative that feeds into the wrestling fan's sense of general derision from the public- "oh, they just didn't want it because it's WRESTLING."
Time Warner/AOL pulled the plug on WCW because of a management change, absolutely. The old management was absolutely fine with one of their divisions losing $80 million a year. New management was focused on making money, and WCW was a branch of Time Warner which was doing the opposite and had no prospects for returning to profitability in the near future.
That's why WCW failed. Even when WCW was beating WWE, they were still spending way more then they were bringing in, as they never capitalized on their run by forming relationships with advertisers. (And who the hell was talking about WWE here anyways? What do they have to do with the conversation? Any time someone criticizes TNA, three other people come out with "but the WWE did....")
Advertising, you don't seem to realize, is what keeps professional wrestling alive. (That, and its kissing sister Merchandising.) It's not about "keeping a good image with the kids", although I'm not exactly sure that receiving several felonies worth of non-perscription medication through the mail is something that adults want to emulate either. It's about advertisers not answering complaints from customers about why they're paying money to a company who's glorifying a felon; and yes, customers complain about that kind of stuff. This is the *real* reason WWE went PG; the boards here, which like to see the picture in as simple terms as possible, want to believe that it was for Linda's Senate run, but advertisers have been pushing the WWE since years before then that they could invest more into their product if they didn't have to worry about responding to customer complaints about what they were promoting.
Advertisers don't want to be in the position where they're supporting drug felons, and regardless of how the wrestling world views it, that's how the "real world", with things like "shareholders" and "corporate responsibility" would view advertisers who are supporting TNA with money while they are pushing a drug felon as their #1 draw.
