MrHashasheen
Enjoying Wrestling
Transcript has been taken from Reddit, all credit there. PWI's Mike Johnson and POPTV's Bradley Schwartz.
TL;DR
=================================================Q: What's the relationship between POP and TNA/iMPACT Wrestling
A: The Passion of the fans is amazing. Our relationship with iMPACT is amazing. The relationship with Dixie Carter is very special, we have a great working relationship. What we have on tuesday night is the best wrestling product going. The characters, the inring action, everything. I'm sucked in, every tuesday I need to watch the show. Its' the 2nd highest rated show on our network. For us, we're excited. We have a longterm deal with iMPACT wrestling.
Q: You guys had the iMPACT replay on tuesday evenings, that was moved to saturday, now that replay is gone. Explain why you guys decided that the replay was going away. A lot of people saw the replay go away and a lot of people thought it's a sign that the deal is faltering.
A: It's a great question, and again, I love the passion out there when people see things like that and jump to conclusions. From a pure programming standpoint - when we started the relationship, iMPACT was new on POP, so we wanted to have as many people as possible be able to find it. So you want to premier it, then repeat it so that more people can get sucked into it and know that it's on and start tuning in. Television has changed the last 2-5 years, with VOD and with delayed viewing and DVR. Repeats across every network don't make as much sense as they used to as people consume content on their own terms. From a marketing standpoint we wanted to suck in people flipping channels. We did that for 3-3.5 months, then we thought ok, people know that it's tuesdays at 9 o'clock, it's going well, people don't need the repeat. They're DVRing it, they're VODing it, it's going well.
From a marketing perspective, we thought.. you know, maybe if we moved the repeat to the weekend, we might find more viewers. There was a little bit of nostalgia for me personally as I used to watch wrestling on saturday mornings. So we did that for about 4-5 weeks, we think it worked a little bit but it wasn't performing as other content in that timeslot would perform - and frankly we didn't market it and hoped people would find it all along. The plan all along was to have one big appointment to tuesday nights show. And if you can't make it at tuesdays at 9, you can DVR it or watch it on VOD.
Q: You mentioned the late viewing. One of the things that happens everyday, after monday night raw airs, after iMPACT airs, the rush you want to find out that Nielsen number and how many people watched. You get the +7 and +3 numbers and all the delayed viewing numbers which we don't get. From a wrestling fans perspective, there's still that fear that for - let's look at these numbers from the monday night wars era. You are privy to the numbers that the average person can't get their hands on. I know you can't give away too much of sensitive information. Talk about the final viewing numbers vs. the initial viewing numbers for iMPACT to give us an idea of what the audience is.
A: It's a, again, I love going on social media and seeing how many people posted the rating for iMPACT. Pointing back to those old days of ratings, overnight numbers just don't matter anymore. You can go look online, about 3 months ago FOX said they'd stop releasing overnight numbers internally because they're meaningless. One of my favourite quotes is from the head of research at CBS. "Overnight Numbers are like calling a baseball game after the 4th inning, there's still a lot more to play and not where the game ends."
I can be absolutely 100% truthful and 100% honest without any spin, every single episode of iMPACT with late viewing and VOD added in has been between 400'000 and 500'000 viewers. The peak, I think the highest one, was 520'000 viewers. That's our peak so far and it's only been 5 Months. And that's after only 7 days. When I look at iMPACT wrestling, i see a show that every single week is around, I would say, 450'000 viewers. And for us, as a small, emerging fast-growing cable network - a weekly original programming doing 450'00 viewers every week is fantastic.
Q: Let's talk a little about the content of the show. How involved has POP been in the week to week guidance what you like on the show, what you don't like. Has there been any sort of edic "hey we want more of this, we want less of that". SpikeTV certainly had that power over iMPACT in the past, and it did change and shape the product. I'm curious how the relationship between POP and iMPACT has grown over the last 5 months, wether POP had any influence on the actual product. Week to week you could make a more interesting product than WWE, not every week of course. How has the relationship grown over the last 5 months and how have you guys felt from a corporate perspective about the product and have you helped push the program in certain directions?
A: Part of my success in general is, I kinda have the philosophy to hire good people and let good people do good team. To that extend, Dixie and her team know wrestling. They know the athletes, they know the stars, they know how to put things together. We had little, i would say no impact on the process they're doing. I love that you said, and I would also say that depending on the week there is no better wrestling product than they (iMPACT) are putting on. The characters and the in-ring action, it's amazing. Some shows are better than the other, but that's true for any sports event or television program. But damn they're doing a fantastic job. Forget about the business side of things, I'm really loving it and I'm sucked in and watch iMPACT every tuesday night. We had no impact creatively at all. We're just really really enjoying the relationship, we're really enjoying the content every week. I wish I could take credit for it, but I got to give credit where credit is due, they're running a great program.
Q: John Gabruick stated to me that iMPACT is looking to bring new partners and investors on board. Is it possible POPTV could be interested in investing in the company, is that something you'd be willing to comment on on the record?
A: It's probably not appropriate for me to get into as a lot of conversations are confidential. Dixie runs here company and it's decisions for her to make. For us as a company that is owned by CBS and LionsGate we're always looking for opportunities to make our business bigger. Wether that's trough finding some strategic acquisitions or some opportunities that are out there, we always have our eyes out for ways to grow our business. Our relationship with iMPACT is very strong. It's not appropriate for me to talk about what their plan is for growing their business.
Q: Final question, somebody is going to listen to it and is going to spin it. I'm going to put you on the spot. September this year, will iMPACT wrestling be on POP?
A: Absolutely. We have a multiyear deal. It will absolutely be on. Upfronts are nothing for the public. Upfronts are very very very much an ad sales driven event. That's where all the televsion networks sell 70-90% of their ad inventory for the year. So the announcements you make in the upfront are really to support what your ad sales team is going out and selling. For iMPACT, because it's such a unique audience with a unique live component to it, there's a sponsorship abilities to that that aren't just in ring sponsorship, show sponsorship and of course advertising. It's really kind of a 360° sell. And we have, us and iMPACT, a 3rd party company that i selling those integrations and sponsorships. So it wasn't something that the POP ad sales team was out there in the market doing. As far as the rest of our network, we sell a women 25-45 demo, an adult 18-49 demo, we really needed a different company with a different client list and a different set of skills to sell 360° sponsorship and integrations as the real way to drive some revenue, additional and incremental revenue. That's why it wasn't in the upfront list as our team wasn't selling it.
From a programming stand point, yes it will be on the air, we're not going to get rid of the 2nd highest rated show on the network.
TL;DR
- iMPACT is the 2nd highest rated show on POPTV
- Every iMPACT episodes does around 400'000-500'000 viewers (Live+3, Live+7, VOD)
- TNA iMPACT will still be on POPTV this fall, they have a long term deal
