Schizophrenic Booking - Best or Worst of both worlds?

[Gelgarin]

So, to offer a little bit a back-story, I thought Impact this week as a little bit shitty. Impact has been consistently good for months now, and since I possess such an analytical mind I seized upon this opportunity to conduct a little analysis into exactly “why” I thought that last Thursday’s show was so substandard. I tallied up some recent shows, and stumbled upon a quite interesting factoid, which is this.

TNA has extremely limited consistently regarding what it offers the audience. Consistency has improved in recent months, mostly as a by-product of the improved quality that came with the streamlined writing process, but it’s still true to say that you seldom tune in to TNA wrestling knowing what kind of show you’re going to get.

Now anybody who watches wrestling knows that it’s perfectly normal for the contents of the product to fluctuate week on week, that’s just the reality of writing TV on the fly, but where TNA achieves a level of uniqueness is in its ability to bounce between contradictory full blown extremes, as I shall now demonstrate.

Take this Thursday’s show as an example, and compare it to the Thanksgiving show just two weeks previous.

Last night’s show contained 25 minutes of wresting across the entire 90 minute show, with only nine of those minutes taking place in the first hour. The wrestling comprised of two handicap matches, two inter-gender matches, one drunken street fight, and one mud wrestling match. There was only one traditional singles match, and that ended in a run in.
Gimmickry was at a premium on this show, and the primary focus of the episode was to promote an angle that is happening next week involving Jeff Jarrett. The main event was two minutes of dialogue between Double J and Mick Foley.

In contrast, the show from two weeks ago contained a much higher 43 minutes of wresting, split into eight matches, seven of which were traditional singles contests. Gimmickry was at a level that for TNA represents a minimum, and the entire focus of the show was a wrestling tournament to see who would win a future title shot. Backstage promo’s were chiefly focused on selling the show as a whole, and very little time was given over the building the PPV or promoting the next episode.

The point of this thread is no to condemn one style of booking. Privately I thought both shows were below average for TNA. It’s to point out how radically different the two shows were to one another, and to post the question, is this a good thing?

But for the recurring cast, you could be forgiven for thinking that the two shows I brought up were being produced by different companies for different cross sections of the fan base. The Thanksgiving outing was probably a winner for people who watch wrestling for the in ring action, and if it wasn’t, I’m sure that it was intended to be. However; the people who are mostly interested in the wrestling itself quite possibly found last night’s show to be intolerable.
I’m equally confident that once you get off of the internet (and away from Marty2Hotty) you’ll find a significant ratio of people who feel exactly the opposite, and found last night’s crash entertainment to be hilarious, and the TCS to be bland as hell.

The point I’m making is this. TNA historically has not been very good at establishing a consistent middle ground regarding how they want to structure their shows. One show may appeal to one kind of fan, and another might drive them away.
What this leads to is people not being sure what they’re going to get when then tune in to TNA, and some might advance the opinion that this is not a good thing. A wise man once said that ‘it’s far easier to make someone tune out of a TV show than to make them tune in’, and there is an argument to be made that putting out regular shows that are going to alienate a section of your audience will have a detriment to long term ratings growth. If someone thinks that there is a significant chance of a show not appealing to them then they are going to be less concerned about tuning in week after week.

Of course the counterargument is that firing shows in different directions helps TNA to test the water regarding what their fan-base do and do not enjoy, and to juggle different viewer demographics more easily than would be the case by trying to please everybody every night. An equally wise man once said that “it’s easier to please some of the people all of the time than all of the people some of the time”.

Given that both the wise men I’ve quoted were me, I’m drawing no judgement on this topic. That’s where you come in. Do TNA struggle with consistency? Does it hurt the product, either for you or for the fan base as a collective? Is it actually beneficial, helping them appeal to a wider audience? Is this entire thread just a knee jerk reaction to a single anomaly?

You decide.

 

[BladeRunner]

Well firstly I liked both shows you mentioned. And yes they were complete opposites in the content. I liked last night's a little more tho, because I like crash tv the best.

I never even thought about consistenty until you mentioned it. Yeah, sometimes they have a little wrestling, and sometimes a lot. But it doesn't bother me either way.

I'm of the opinion that surprises are good, and changing things up a lot is good, based on the first premise. I like that I really never know what's going to happen, whether there's going to be an all out brawl for 20 minutes, or Mick Foley talking shit for 20 minutes. I also like variety and last night's show had a lot of variety as well.

I don't think that what you're speaking of is anomalous because TNA consistently is always over the place for each episode. That's generally the appeal to me, is that I literally have no idea what's going to happen.

With WWE it sometimes can get very cookie cutter. Especially with ECW, where it's probably going to have 2-3 matches with little to no promos. RAW mixes things up a little bit, but sometimes they can put on some just awful stuff, whether it's bad matches or skits. But they do have more random elements to it and I like that.

There's always going to be different groups to appeal to, here's how I see them:

You got the people who really like just wrestling.

You got the people who really like the hardcore and the extreme.

And you got the people who really like the drama.

As long as you have a little something for each one on each episode, you're pretty much appealing to the whole wrestling community.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I think that TNA does struggle with consistency and does so quite often. I don't expect every show to be some sort of a barn burner from either company. What I do like to see is a coherant show that actually serves a purpose, such as promoting existing storylines and fueds as well as building up to ppvs. If what I see on the screen makes some sense, I can live with it and there are a lot of times I don't see that from TNA.

Last night, nearly every match and segment featured on Impact was a complete waste of time in what was one of the weakest Impacts I've seen this year. TNA booked several matches for the card, but didn't bother to make the matches all that relevant to anything currently going on within TNA. A few exceptions was the whole Foley/Jarrett meeting that TNA kept shoving down our throats last night and the eight man tag match. Neither of which are particularly appealing really.

Don't get me wrong, I wish that Raw would book more matches than it often does, but there is at least something coherant going on. I can at least see what they're doing on Raw and where they're going with something. I think the past several Raw's have been solid. They haven't been out of this world spectacular or anything, but Raw has done a good job of building up feuds, matches and stories and has gotten interest up for the upcoming TLC ppv.

Impact has been losing my attention lately for a number of reasons. I think, more so lately, Impact has been booking matches just for the sake of having matches on the card. Most of the time, it seems to me that the matches just seem random, don't make any sense, don't further any real storylines, etc. Just putting matches on the card for the sake of having them, especially when they don't really serve any purpose but to just take up air time, and usually aren't that great doesn't mean it's going to be a good show.

 

[jaxx]

I read the spoilers for last nights show and didn't even bother to watch because it was a ridiculous cluster fuck. TNA never really books consistent shows which i hope will change next year. Russo is an idiot who knows nothing about wrestling, which is why fans have to suffer through crap like last night. TNA is suppose to stand for total nonstop action, which means out of a 2hr show i would like to see more than freakin 25min of wrestling.

As a longtime wrestling fan i'm hoping the hogan/bischoff experiment will bring positive changes to TNA. I truly hope that we fans get to experience another monday night war, because then everybody wins. Wrestlers will have another option as far as a place to work, both promotions will have to up their game and stop putting on crappy shows. As for me i cant wait for jan. to see what changes TNA implements, i hope the first change will be to FIRE RUSSO!!!

 

[NSL]

I loved the tournament show, but as a wrestling fan, it was aimed towards the kind of fan I am. The show Thursday night was utter crap. I rated it a 2/10, and don't see anything that can change it.

TNA has issues with consistency, and it's horrible, because they can grab a set of viewers for a few weeks, then alienate them before more come in. Then, before anyone realizes everything that's new, they're changing again. It's a bad way to try and grow your audience, and it's a bad way to market your product. If they mixed last night with the tournament episode, it would have been miles better, and would have been a bit more consistent over a period of time.

 

[Baximus]

The reason that TNA has consistency issues is that Russo doesn't have a long term plan because he knows that he won't be there long term.

I think the JJ return was the only thing that really has meant anything longterm from the last two weeks. That's setting up something for when Hulk gets to Impact and to return a familiar name.

Other than that, it has been nothing but filler.

As for the styles, the tournament was better because it was more wrestling that actually held a purpose. I don't know if Bobby will ever get his shot but it at least was a decent show to watch.

Last night's show was outright stupid. Nothing but dumb gimmicks that fitted with 'Big Sexy's' character booking. Nothing important happened. NOTHING. We got no development other than 'Rob Terry = stupid' and 'Jesse Neal pinned someone!'


I just really hope this skitzo booking doesn't split up Beer Money when they could be a great tag challenger once Hulk takes over. It would be a damn shame if Russo split them just before Hulk came in and actually utilized them.