Thursday Night Wars

[Cvaldezjr04]

So, IMPACT is on Thursday nights, SmackDown! is on Fridays, but SmackDown! started on Thursdays...Anyways, So here's my question, IF (yes IF and only IF, please don't all the "know-it-alls" jump on me, its an IF question), SD! were to return to thursday nights, what would it be like? Would SD! reign as far as ratings? Would there be a war between the 2 shows? Would SD! ratings drop a ton?? or would IMPACT be in trouble??? What do you guys think?? could it ignite the people at TNA to become better and become more competitive? I personally think this would be cool, The Monday Night Wars have been done and quite frankly, I don't think TNA is in a competitive position right now to go against RAW on Monday Nights, just look at what happened in January of '10...(and it hasn't changed much since then, but that's another story)...So being that SD! is the least popular show of the 2 in WWE, a la the ratings, I think it would be interesting to see what would come of a possible Thursday Night Wars....Thoughts???

 

[RkoMachine]

smackdown would kill tna

Yeah agreed!

TNA is nothing but an alternative to WWE! Granted they do have some loyal fans but alot of people that watch only watch because they used to watch SD on that night

If Smackdown returned to Thursday TNA would have to move to Wednesday or just go out of business

 

[mr_dna]

I agree Smackdown would just whoop Impacts Candy ASS, But then TNA might step up there game become more original and give us a WAR not on the level of the monday night wars but still a mini WAR. WWF was loseing big time to WCW at one point so who knows if TNA can create the spark we could see something if only untill vince gets tired of it and buys them.

On that note VINCE SMACKDOWN LIVE THURSDAYS make it Happen.

 

[mlp420]

First of all, anybody who thinks Vince McMahon can buy TNA is an idiot. Vince McMahon was only able to buy ECW and WCW because they went bankrupt. TNA has not lost money in years. They're not just going to sell the company to Vince McMahon even if they were losing money (which they're not). And if he did buy it from them, the feds would be on his ass for potentially violating antitrust laws. (Which is what UFC is dealing with right now thanks to the Strikeforce purchase).

And as far as the SD to Thursday thing goes, I don't think it's very likely. I don't know Vince McMahon, but I doubt that he obsesses with putting TNA out of business as much as some of you guys who ride his cock obsess with the idea of him doing it. If so, he could have tried it a long time ago. He could have put ECW on Thursday night. He could have had Superstars go head to head instead of an hour before. He could have moved SD back to Thursday when they made the move to Syfy to begin with. Logic says Vince is interested in moving SD on a Tuesday, since that's where they've had the two test shows. I think he's most interested in maximizing SD's ratings.

 

[Dolph Ziggler]

^ they are loosing money jimmy wang yang checks keep bouncing and tna have stated there in financial trouble's plus there ratings are only getting around 1.02-1.12 on spike tv which has quite a higher viewership stop making crap up vince could buy and piss on tna if he wanted to

 

[the_awesome MIZ]

There is no competition in my view..
smackdown is way superior than tna(for me even better then raw)..So its a waste of a thread,no competiton smackdown wins!!

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It's not feesible as if SmackDown! makes a move, it's most likely going to be to Tuesday nights and it'll probably be live from now on.

I believe that TNA has figured out that they just can't compete with the WWE when it comes to the numbers. We can debate as to which company is better, who has the better wrestlers, matches, stories and all this and that. However, when it comes to a ratings war, TNA cannot beat the WWE at this time. I think that TNA has long since figured this out. After all, their attempt to go head to head with Raw on Monday nights was a complete disaster that ultimately resulted in them losing about 40% of their audience on average. It took most of the rest of 2010 for TNA to build back their audience after moving back to Thursday nights.

Now, it's true that SmackDown! doesn't bring in the same size audience that Raw does. However, SmackDown! usually draws somewhere around or close to, sometimes in excess of, 3 million viewers and that's roughly twice the TNA audience. There's always a possibility that a "Thursday Night War" between Impact Wrestling & SmackDown! would be a closer race than Raw vs. iMPACT! was back in 2010. But, there are people that prefer SmackDown! to Raw because, more often than not, it turns out to be the show that has the better wrestling matches. It's not at all unusual to see 3 competitive matches on SD! go 10+ minutes whereas you almost never have a single match in IW go that long and that could play a factor.

Even if it were a closer race, I'd say SD! would outdraw IW by a comfortable margin. However, as I said earlier, I don't think either WWE or TNA are particularly concerned with competing with each other as there are bigger obstacles coming up. The fall television season is gearing up to start and both WWE & TNA are on nights in which they have to deal with a lot of competition.

 

[finoj05]

TNA did crush ECW once when it was pre-empted to go head to head with Impact. So TNA beating a WWE program is possible, but yeah, this scenario is not going to happen and Impact's ratings would suffer from it, but so would Smackdown's. Not a good a move for either company.

However, the ratings battle would be closer than it was in 2010 on Monday's, considering the regular ratings for both programs are only .6 apart on some weeks, compared to 2.0 apart like RAW/Impact.

 

[Dagger Dias]

I think that Smackdown would come out on top if it had to face Impact in a Thursday Night War due to a lot of TNA fans also being WWE fans and would therefore prefer Smackdown. Granted WWE would not necessarily destroy TNA or make them retreat like Raw did to Impact in 2010. The ratings might see a bit of a spike in Smackdown if and when they up their quality to compete against Impact. TNA's been struggling to keep what ratings they do have and they probably would not be able to handle the loss of some Smackdown fans that watch both.

 

[XXJJ]

Their wouldn't be any Thursday night wars. TNA cannot compete with the WWE as a company. The Monday night wars were great because WCW was a legit rival to the WWE as a company. They were beating them for a while too.

The reason they would be moving SD is too avoid UFC. Making it live on Tuesday is a much better decision. Taping the show for Thursday, just so they can get into a silly competition with a company they are 100 times bigger than. That doesnt make sense from a WWE point of view.

 

[Mustang Sally]

TNA's been struggling to keep what ratings they do have and they probably would not be able to handle the loss of some Smackdown fans that watch both.

Plus, it's logical to presume that if WWE decided to put Smackdown on Thursday nights, it would be for the express purpose of knocking TNA out of business. To go about it, they would bulk up Smackdown to a level never seen before...... displaying their top talent and special events until the smaller company cried uncle.

To be honest, a small part of me wouldn't mind seeing this, because of TNA's aborted attempt to take over Monday nights (in January, 2010) and put a dent in WWE. At that time, TNA threw everything they had into the effort, including the newly-hired Hulk Hogan. Yes, it didn't work, but if WWE tried the same thing with Smackdown, TNA could hardly claim the larger company was being unfair to them, could they?

However, a much larger part of me doesn't want TNA knocked out of business. WWE employs all the people they need, yet there are still many capable wrestlers out there looking for work.....and TNA is a good landing spot for them. Besides, as much as Vince McMahon may want to be the only major wrestling company, it's a fact that he's never as good as when he has some competition pushing him.

But yes, if Smackdown ever did move to Thursday, it would be bye-bye, Dixie.

 

[hollowpoint]

If they did something like this (Impact v SD!) I don't think it would go well for IMPACT. The viewership is already down when they have their own night, so putting them up against a more popular, more established program would be a disaster. The thing about IMPACT is that is supposed to be something different from the norm. That's what made it intriguing to watch. Now that the programs are similar, there's little drawing people to watch other than old superstars.

 

[Dizzy]

I like how all of you come off WWE absorbed to the fact, it looks stupid. First off, if SmackDown moves to Thursdays, that will be the death of SmackDown, not TNA.

There is plenty of competition for both Impact and SmckDown would have to go through. NFL, Jersey Shore, MLB playoffs, NBA regular season/playoffs. Impact draws about 1.7 million without DVR ratings included, SmackDown draws 2.1 million without DVR ratings. Not exactly a huge loss for TNA is it?

Now, NFL draws well over 8 million. Jersey Shore draws 8 million. NBA games have gone up since 2010. Explain to me, how wouldn't that be considered the death of SmackDown as well?

Fact is, WWE doesn't care about TNA. TNA doesn't care about WWE anymore. Fans that actually want TNA to die are idiots, WWE is nowhere near the level that it was against WCW and WCW was stupid not to move. You are basically hoping 50 wrestlers become unemployed and other talents do not get signed.

If Thursdays became too much for TNA, they can move to Wednesdays and Tuesdays which are much better anyhow.

Anyways, this thread was good perspective to see how many "fans" are rooting for a company to die like WCW when it's not even the same situation.

 

[H33LTurn]

I think that SD would squash TNA but who knows. Between the two shows I think that SD would still draw more attention than Impact Wrestling.

 

[Nate DaMac]

I like how all of you come off WWE absorbed to the fact, it looks stupid. First off, if SmackDown moves to Thursdays, that will be the death of SmackDown, not TNA.

I would love to see how you have come to such a bold conclusion.

There is plenty of competition for both Impact and SmckDown would have to go through. NFL, Jersey Shore, MLB playoffs, NBA regular season/playoffs. Impact draws about 1.7 million without DVR ratings included, SmackDown draws 2.1 million without DVR ratings. Not exactly a huge loss for TNA is it?

Now, NFL draws well over 8 million. Jersey Shore draws 8 million. NBA games have gone up since 2010. Explain to me, how wouldn't that be considered the death of SmackDown as well?

Fact is, WWE doesn't care about TNA. TNA doesn't care about WWE anymore. Fans that actually want TNA to die are idiots, WWE is nowhere near the level that it was against WCW and WCW was stupid not to move. You are basically hoping 50 wrestlers become unemployed and other talents do not get signed.

If Thursdays became too much for TNA, they can move to Wednesdays and Tuesdays which are much better anyhow.

There is one vital piece of information that everyone tends to leave out on this sort of thing. The Smackdown, Raw, and Impact audiences are in large part, the same group of people; wrestling fans. This idea that the 1.7 million people that watch Impact aren't the exact same people who watch Smackdown and Raw is silly. Don't believe me? Just think back to when Impact decided they were going to go up against Raw on Monday nights. It was a fucking disaster. Viewers were forced to choose between the 2 shows and overwhelming majority chose Raw and as a result, Impact saw all time lows in terms or TV ratings.

I'm not saying that this means Smackdown would crush TNA and force them to move their programming, I'm saying that the show that is considered entertaining by the majority is going to stand tall. I think Smackdown would likely win that battle, but it could really go either way.

I suppose the ratings could end up being more evenly distributed between them causing both shows to lose a significant amount of viewers. I just don't think it's very likely. This is just my opinion, but I think that when forced to choose, most wrestling fans would choose to watch Smackdown over Impact.

This is all for naught anyway, if Smackdown moves I'm pretty sure they'll be moving to Tuesday. Why take a risk and try to compete with Impact when TNA isn't even on your radar?

 

[hatehabsforever]

I can say without hesitation that if Smackdown were to move to Thursday nights, while it would not be the death of TNA, it would seriously cripple them and would in fact force them to end up changing nights themselves. I would never be so bold as to say this with 100% certainty because no one could make such an emphatic claim. I would only say this with 99% certainty.

Nate is right, there are only so many wrestling fans to go around, and I have no doubt that more of these fans would choose SD over TNA rather than the other way around. As well, I would think that the only reason that Vince would move SD to Thursday would be if for some reason he suffered a brain cramp and perceived TNA as a threat. If he were to feel this way, he would pull out all of the stops to ensure that SD was at it's absolute best. He would load up the roster with all of the top names from either show. He would attempt to put on the best story lines he possibly could. He would set out with the goal to squash TNA and he would ensure that he would do so.

Having said this, I don't think he perceives this threat, therefore he would not move to Thursdays. He will either stay on Fridays or go live on Tuesdays. And TNA's command of the 0.9 to 1.2 ratings from Thursday nights would be safe.

 

[Dizzy]

There is one vital piece of information that everyone tends to leave out on this sort of thing. The Smackdown, Raw, and Impact audiences are in large part, the same group of people; wrestling fans.

Casual wrestling fans dominate WWE.

This idea that the 1.7 million people that watch Impact aren't the exact same people who watch Smackdown and Raw is silly.

Really? Fanbase is a fanbase. It's not incredibly hard to find people who dislike WWE or dislike TNA.

Don't believe me? Just think back to when Impact decided they were going to go up against Raw on Monday nights.

Actually, go look at the ratings for Thursday replays. It drew 1.7 million. Thursdays were the days fans wanted, not Mondays.

It was a fucking disaster. Viewers were forced to choose between the 2 shows and overwhelming majority chose Raw and as a result, Impact saw all time lows in terms or TV ratings.

They really didn't. They drew low numbers like that before but again, a replay on Thursdays benefited and showed proof, people preferred Thursdays.

They also drew high numbers at 8pm start time and lost around 5% of viewerships as the night continued. So, It wasn't like they drew 0.1 amount of viewers. They did lose viewership on top of Raw and NFL though.

I'm not saying that this means Smackdown would crush TNA and force them to move their programming, I'm saying that the show that is considered entertaining by the majority is going to stand tall. I think Smackdown would likely win that battle, but it could really go either way.

Not everyone watches SmackDown considering their numbers go up and down but I think it would be a good competition.

I suppose the ratings could end up being more evenly distributed between them causing both shows to lose a significant amount of viewers. I just don't think it's very likely. This is just my opinion, but I think that when forced to choose, most wrestling fans would choose to watch Smackdown over Impact.

Does it really matter? This isn't the 90s. If you watch SmackDown, you can DVR Impact. If you watch Impact, you can DVR SmackDown.

This is all for naught anyway, if Smackdown moves I'm pretty sure they'll be moving to Tuesday. Why take a risk and try to compete with Impact when TNA isn't even on your radar?

If TNA wasn't on their radar, they would have elected Thursday nights already.

But again, It also could be due to the potential rape they would face against Jersey Shore, NFL, NBA, MLB.