Ending a monopoly. To show there is something else out there. That even if we (TNA) are small, we dare to oppose the giant. TNA has had this in mind since 2006. They just didn't feel safe enough until they got Hulk Hogan.
Okay, I'm going to equate it like this. You work at McDonald's, right? You know first hand how powerful the McDonald's brand name is. Imagine if a lower-level fast food joint like Five Guys decided that because they got the guy who was in the Ronald McDonald costume twenty years ago to now be their mascot, that they're going to IMMEDIATELY roll out an expansion where they're going to open up a Five Guys right in the vicinity of every McDonald's in the country. Most people don't know what in the hell Five Guys is. Instead of slowly rolling out locations, and building brand recognition, they decide to go ahead and say, "McDonald's, we're taking you down!" In addition to this, they stop serving what they have on their menu and bring back old and failed items that used to be on the McDonald's menu, such as the McRib. Sure, the McRib might have been popular for a little bit, but people got sick of it, and soon enough, it didn't draw, period.
It's a terrible business plan. Five Guys would lose a lot of money in doing this and look like complete jokes. You walk before you run... which is what WCW did back when they tried to compete with the WWE. And for awhile, they were successful. You just can't compete with the WWE, when people really don't know what it is you actually are.
Hence why TNA wanted to cut in.
And TNA proved that their management is full of functional ******s.
WCW died because it was full of politics. If the talent wasn't established or had some pull in his contract, he was just there to pick up a check. I wouldn't compare WCW to TNA here. TNA runs on a family-oriented work ethic while WCW was about big bucks at any cost.
Vince Russo, Hulk Hogan, Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash, and Eric Bischoff were five of the major reasons why WCW went under back in 2000. These five guys are currently still at the top of TNA. And guess what, everyone who is/was there while the Monday Night Conflict was going on... Scott Hall, X-Pac, The Nasty Boys, etc... they were they to collect a paycheck. They brought in Bubba The Love Sponge because he was Hogan's buddy. The only family-oriented thing that was going on while the Monday Night Conflict was going on was Hulk Hogan trying to sell his over-the-hill buddies on us.
After holding a 10 year monopoly, I would too really.
And they let their short-sightedness make them look like fools.
WCW was similar to WWE, it still was an alternative. An alternative is having something different to choose from regardless of its cosmetic similarities. Like
Different company, similar product. Still an alternative.
An alternative to the WWE is ROH, or ECW 15 years ago, where ROH is based on athleticism and wrestling more than copycat storylines, and ECW was based on hardcore wrestling as well as awesome wrestling out of guys like Chris Jericho, Dean Malenko, and Rey Mysterio, until WCW decided to buy what was making them such an appealing alternative. And when WCW was successful, it was a true alternative to the WWF, because they had something that the WWF couldn't offer.
What does TNA have that the WWE doesn't offer? Gimmick matches? Sure, they have the X Division, and while the Monday Night Conflict was going on, those guys got no ring time. They took a backseat to Russo's awfulness and Hogan trying to get his buddies to matter even though their sell by date was a long time ago.
This where the learning has come in. Over time, TNA has bettered this. PPV's have been promoted very nicely with every part of the card being plugged.
Like I've already stated, when you're taking on your competition, you need to have your shit TOGETHER. TNA wasn't ready for it. They were ill-prepared to take on the WWE, and as a result, they failed. Monday nights is NOT a time to learn. It's a time where you sink a lot of money into promotion, and you feel that this is the time to really cut into their market share. Considering that their house shows draw under 1,000 people, and they have to stay in The Impact Zone for a lot of taping of events, because nobody will go see them is a major problem. They weren't ready for a major stab at the WWE.
And again, when nobody is buying the PPVs... who cares if they've been promoted nicely? Nobody's going to put their $34.95 down for them. Not in this economy, and not when the WWE puts on a PPV a month, and when the UFC puts on 1-2 PPV events a month.
These videos were very well presented during TNA's broadcasts heading into the Victory Road event. You can say this isn't related because it happened after the Monday Night period, however I feel it is.
Well, you're wrong, because it happened after they foolishly went after the WWE. It's not related. It doesn't matter that they're doing it now, because they didn't do it when it counted the most.
The question of the topic is if their time on Mondays damaged the company. They learned from it. The ratings may have fallen, but at the same time, their creative team has changed, their dynamic on iMPACT! has changed, talent has grown, ratings have re-risen, and the roster has never felt more confident.
If they "learned from it"... it means that their image was broken by the move to Mondays in the first place, and they realized something was wrong. So in other words, it took the company to be thoroughly embarrassed to finally get the hint. And in the end, ratings are where they were a year ago. In my eyes, this pretty much means that TNA will never improve their position and stature, and if they ever do get their shit together and really start trying to make waves, attracting an audience like casual fans and fans who watch the WWE, well, Spike still might not let them move to Mondays out of fear that they'll get spanked in the ratings, where a repeat of UFC Unleashed would draw a stronger rating, or at least a rating of what TNA would do there, and it would cost less money for the station to do so.
As far as the roster feeling more confident... really? Didn't Samoa Joe just get suspended for speaking out on how he's been handled? For god's sakes, this was a guy who could have been a potential star and really spearhead TNA being a contender to the WWE. TNA had him kidnapped by ninjas, didn't explain what happened to him, and they probably booked another silly angle involving him. I'd be upset too.
I personally agree with you, but not professionally. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, those Disney teens. Face it, it doesn't matter if what a celebrity does is good or bad, the media eats it up.
Personally agree, but not professionally? What does that even mean?
In Hogan's case, he gets thought of being a creep for that time he rubbed lotion on Brooke's legs, and how his new girlfriends REALLY look a lot like Brooke. He also is thought of being a bad father, and a complete asshole for all that stuff that happened with Nick's car accident. Hogan really isn't a constant draw for the paparazzi like those people you mentioned are.
RVD's debut took place on their first night. The loudest the iMPACT! Zone has ever been. Sting turned heel the same night. The Angle/Anderson feud happened during this time. RVD won the TNA World Championship after 4 grueling matches in under 24 hours. How's that nothing?
Because they didn't do enough to keep an audience. And that's what it comes down to. Did they or did they not succeed? The only thing I care about is the end result. They did not succeed. Ultimately, who cares if RVD debuted? His match was 10 seconds, and then he got his ass kicked by Sting.
No. They learned that the fans would rather not choose what wrestling show to watch and watch them both rather than just one. Which is why during the Monday period, they had a repeat on Thursdays with the exception of one week. Testing the grounds.
I think the repeat on Thursdays if anything stated that TNA wasn't confident enough in their product. They knew nobody would be watching them on Mondays. TNA also admitted defeat in the war, leaving their show on Thursdays. It was a bad idea from the getgo.
Joe Casual must be living under a rock. Spike has been doing a better job of promoting TNA nowadays. A TNA commercial can air during Maximum Overdrive.
Back when TNA first aired on January 4th, not once did they say during the program that they're on Thursdays every night and that this Monday night thing, in the interim, is just for one night. On January 11th, I'm sure people tuned in expecting to see TNA, and instead they got Maximum Overdrive, or something of that nature. Again, I'm speaking from the viewpoint of a very casual fan. When you promote something, you have to do it to the lowest common denominator. When they tried doing it every week, starting in March, it was to very little fanfare. Heck, I had no idea TNA was going to be live that night until I saw a competing LD for it. TNA did a shit job of promoting it.
An experiment is not a failure if a positive result can be found. Even if its not the one they had in mind.
Not when you're playing with millions of dollars.
TNA has wanted to compete with WWE since 2006. Looking back at the days of VKM mocking Mr. McMahon and Triple H and showing up outside a WWE arena. They just waited to have the right person. Once they began to look into the change, they took careful steps to see if it was an idea that could produce more or if they could learn from what they were failing at previously.
Considering their backup plan by having replays on Thursdays, I'd say they did have a plan. To see if it was a viable idea to directly compete or continue growing.
Then the best way to compete with the WWE is to not give fans a reason to think about the WWE, and not paying them any kind of attention whatsoever. If you want to compete with the WWE, you need to do what ROH is doing, which is being a TRUE alternative, not a watered down version of the WWE, and not copying old WWE storylines. What you consider a backup plan, I consider admitting defeat. You don't let fans choose between your product and your competitor's... you MAKE them choose. And fans will choose your product over the WWE if you truly make your product can't miss. You have to put on the right matches. Less storylines, and more action. If TNA let two talented X Division guys go for 20 minutes, and you let them put on a MOTY candidate, that's something that's not miss. Capitalize on what the WWE is doing wrong... create an exciting tag division, and really capitalize on such an unutilized asset like the X Division. Instead of doing this on Monday nights, where they could have lived up to their name of Total Nonstop Action, they were content in trying to be edgy for the sake of being edgy, and letting old guys nobody cares about shit up the product.
Mr. Anderson, The Pope, RVD and Jeff Hardy? Mr. Anderson has grown and grabbed every single bit he had of star power and made it flourish in less than 6 months, same with D' Angelo Dinero. RVD may not be the most impressive promo guy out there, but the crowd eats him up. Jeff has his legal issues, but there is no denying he can still offer.
Again, it doesn't matter if ratings are stagnant and going nowhere. And if they really wanted to compete with the WWE on Monday nights, promoting the FUCK out of these four guys on commercials not only on Spike, but during Raw, and buying ad-time whenever and wherever they could to promote the guys who are talented that the WWE gave up on would have been critical. Imagine if you're watching Raw, and TNA aired a commercial with Bischoff saying "Hey, why are you watching this when Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy are wresting right now on Spike TV?" would have been a great way to get viewers to flip over and at the very least check what was going on out.
Was January 4 not a baby step? Was moving to Mondays while still featuring a Thursday replay not a baby step?
No, it was like taking one helicopter flying lesson and calling yourself a helicopter pilot afterwards. They weren't ready.
Come on, man. Don't bring this old, inaccurate cliche in here.
They gave The Nasty Boys a major angle. Rhino and Team 3D look very old. Actually, my mistake... they are now a retirement home for ECW Rejects. Look, it's nice they're giving those guys a payday but at the end of the day, and this is always the case with TNA, they need to be focusing on what they have to make things better... not rehashing old ideas that the WWE have done already. And for the most part, that is what they did throughout the Monday Night Conflict.
"Ric Flair is in TNA? Man I miss that guy. What's he up to there? Let's watch". They draw people in and then give the rub to the young guy. In the Jan 4th episode of iMPACT! Hulk Hogan made his debut. What did he do? Praise the young guys all promo long (with a little talk about change and challenge too). Then Angle/Styles was announced. The (rather amazing) match took place, and when it ended, you had Ric Flair nodding in approval and Hulk Hogan coming out and saying "Those two guys in the ring right now are the two greatest wrestlers on the planet". We get a similar thing today with Ric Flair, Jay Lethal and Fortune. Yes, you did have The Nasty Boys in there and The Band, however The Band helped put over Beer Money and Eric Young, but outside circumstances came along the way. Sean Morley only had 2 matches. One was a loss to Desmond Wolfe. Orlando Jordan helped put over The Pope, who would then feud for the World Championship. These old guys were here to play as role models to younger talent.
The Band and Hulk Hogan took up a lot of airtime. And as far as your statement on Flair goes, the casual fan would be like, "Wait a minute... I thought this guy retired, what the hell is he doing here in this company that isn't the WWE?" And in the end, everything they did on January 4th, in the long run, meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. There was one VERY Critical error they made that I'll get to in a little bit.
The topic asks if TNA stint on Mondays did any damage. I was just saying no by presenting what happened afterwords.
In my eyes, the way you're answering the question is, "The Monday Night Wars benefited TNA because it took them getting their asses handed to them, in addition to a complete company-wide embarrassment for the company to finally take the first step in starting to do things right."
It wasn't the smartest thing to do, but it did benefit them. How is having a billboard on NYC, your network giving green light to the possibility of more shows and having more people in the wrestling business interested in contributing (Tommy Dreamer, Rob Van Dam) to the business in their own way something negative? It got their name out, even if the ratings didn't improve and even fell, they have more notoriety now.
If you're trying to build your brand name, a billboard in NYC is the last thing you should be doing. You need to be appealing to all sorts of markets, not just one segmented market in New York City. Spike is happy because they're at least drawing over a 1.0 again, which is what they certainly weren't consistently achieving on Monday nights. As far as the green light to the possibility of more shows, that TNA Reaction show was a miserable failure (a .25 rating!). I doubt another show would really succeed. Having more people interested in contributing means that they'd be happy to work for a less demanding schedule, which brings me back to the "retirement home" line. As far as notoriety goes... I think at the end, they're where they were a year ago, just in worse shape.
I don't buy into these reports. TNA seems way too relaxed on that regard. But that's off topic for me.
Well, these are coming from Meltzer, who is pretty dead-on with his PPV buyrate numbers. And hey, you're the one who keeps bringing PPVs into this.
They got their name out to that rather saturated market. They had a solid contingency plan. They retreated before getting in too deep. How did they not have their "shit together"? This is a business that revolves around taking calculated risks. It has always been. How is that a failure? It is the nature of the pro wrestling business. Just because some find more success than others does not make it a failure.
It was something they shouldn't have done in the first place. Getting your name out there, when you're planning on doing this permanently is fine. Differentiate your product. The risks taken cost them a lot of money, and any level-headed person could see that it wasn't going to work. This risk wasn't calculated. TNA put their product on Mondays and did nothing to get people to watch. This hurt them in the long term more than anything else, like I mentioned earlier.
It's only been 6 months. In the 90's when WCW "declared war", it took them 2 years to finally start getting the upper hand. And when WWE had all the right players (The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mankind, etc.), it took them over a year to turn the tide.
Again, WCW had an already built-in fanbase from their days on TBS. The ratings were always close, because they snapped up guys who the left the WWE and were still popular. Luger showing up literally within days of his last WWE appearance? That was huge, and a true gamechanger. WCW had the element of having gamechangers join the roster on a regular basis. At the end of the day, the only true gamechanger for TNA would be someone like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, or a top WWE guy like John Cena, Randy Orton, or Triple H (lol) jumping ship. Shane McMahon? That would be a true gamechanger. I really don't think that even someone like Goldberg at this point would be a gamechanger.
TNA didn't feel satisfied with the way thing were working in '09. Their ratings were growing but not fast enough. Spike wasn't helping either with their lack of marketing. So once TNA got a hold of Hulk Hogan, they decided to change the formula. They went to try and take on WWE on Monday nights. They may have lost in the ratings, but at the same time, they gained some notoriety in the mainstream and Spike has had more interest in them.
I really don't see any real notoriety for TNA in the mainstream media at all. Please provide some examples. The only example I can think of is when Spike probably mandates that they plug TNA on UFC broadcasts, and that leads to moments like this where Joe Rogan was openly mocking Hulk Hogan:
The only reason why Spike has an interest in them? Well, they draw bigger ratings than other crap on that channel, like Manswers. Of course they want to promote it as much as they can. Doesn't mean they were happy with the Monday Night move, and it doesn't mean that TNA will ever get another chance there.
TNA ReAction (which was produced during its stint on Mondays) is now a 2nd show for TNA to air in its US market and offers a feel different from any other wrestling show in the week.
I wouldn't use this as a selling point. The first show drew a .25. I was shocked that they actually gave it a timeslot.
TNA Xplosion was re-branded and Spike has shown interest in bringing it to their channel. This all came from TNA "stupidly and blindly" jumping to Mondays for a while. They told everybody that they can be big some day and are growing to this day. They expanded their market and now have a wider range of programming. Their "competition" has taken notice. How is that damaging?
We'll see if TNA XPlosion (and I don't even know what channel it airs on) gets brought over to Spike. I'm sure TNA Reaction will fail again, and I doubt they'll get that chance. Spike of course wants TNA to succeed, but the fact of the matter is that the wrestling market is what it is right now. How as the WWE "taken notice"? Examples please.
Look... the wrestling market has topped out. Pro wrestling right now just isn't popular. The ratings for both Raw and Impact are both going to stay the same. It's why the move to Mondays was so mindboggling to me. Why would you take away part of your audience (people who watch Raw still watch Impact), and still leave them the option to choose what show to watch? TNA should have been confident enough in MAKING fans choose... and of course the inherent problem there is that you need enough of an audience to make that audience decide what to watch. Promotion was a problem on all ends from this Monday Night Failure, but what was even a more monumental failure, which made TNA dig its own grave, was that despite high ratings in the 8:00-9:00 hour back on January 4th (and they came back to earth once Raw started), they neglected that and decided to go head on with Raw when they tried making Monday nights a full-time move.
HOW FUCKING DUMB CAN YOU BE?
This was a very critical error on TNA's part. You grab fans from the 8:00-9:00 hour... before Raw starts. From there, you make the fans make a decision.... and you do your damndest to make sure that they stay on with your product. Seriously, common sense goes a long way, and TNA set themselves up to fail on Monday nights with that monumental blunder. Again, it goes to show how stupid upper management is, and how they let their own arrogance really do a number on them.
Look, Killjoy, I really like how you're trying to spin this argument, but at the end of the day, you still acknowledge that it took TNA getting killed on Monday nights before they really figured out the problem. The fact that every other week, their show was pretaped, was a killer as well. It killed the WWF back when they pretaped shows during the first Monday Night Wars, because Bischoff used to read results on air (although it ironically also saved them, but that is well beside the point... the WWE didn't and doesn't acknowledge TNA). This was when not as many people had the internet to find results as well. You can read spoilers at the drop of a hat now, and absolutely killed their Monday Night viewership.
Again, it all boils down to you needing your shit together to take on your competition. TNA didn't do much of anything to instill confidence of that. It took a thorough embarrassment and losing a lot of money for them to realize what was wrong. That's not good.
