Yes, absolutely, I couldn't agree anymore with you. When they remain in the Impact zone, the crowd feel like they see the same thing every week or arrive at the arena without any excitement because they're practically there every week. One example is the guy with the Hogan bandanna and sunglasses in the second or third row, he's present in the Impact zone week after week and looks depressed.
Remember when they went to about 4 or 5 different places to tape Impact in 2011? There were about 3000+ fans in attendance; that's your average PPV attendance (with the exception of the big 3). If they can pack that many people in just your everyday TNA Impact, I'm sure they can do a whole lot more with the PPV's, especially now considering that they have much bigger build ups to PPV's, meaning that we will (most likely) get that huge hype and also look forward to such an event after not viewing a PPV in a 2/3/4 month period.
So they have all these factors that'll put asses into seats, now it all depends on the creative. Like many on a previous thread mentioned, "this is a risky move". Some Impact Wrestling episodes disappoint and if we get that continually, ratings will drop and the fans wouldn't have an interest anymore because of the bore. Look how the Aces and Eights has just dragged along for the past 3 months with many losing interest now; at first it had everybody hooked, now it's just a mid-card storyline and many of the fans couldn't care less apart from when somebody gets unmasked. What if we get that a lot more often? They won't have many PPV buys because fans will give up on them, could expect a disappointment and even the PPV itself can be a let-down (and this could seem to continue but most of the time it doesn't though, so at the moment, we can rely on a 4 star Pay-Per-View event).
In conclusion, this is all down to the creative and the bookers; they have to make sure that the fans will tune in week after week and also that they will get an interest in the PPV. With bad creative decisions, not only will the ratings decline (oh how could they get any worse!) but the PPV buy rates can get struck. It's all up to Matt Conway, Bruce Pritchard, Dave Lagana and anybody else involved in the creative scene. Even if the new strategy doesn't turn out well this year, I guess they should still carry it on as it definitely is a great idea and the only area in need of improvement lies in the creative field. So the only excuse for a poor attendance COULD practically be the creative team but I'm sure they can fix that if the situation leads till an extent.