Hopefully whatever network they get on, if they even do, then that network needs to advertise an promote TNA. People say the brand is ruined and nothing can change it. Well, that is not true. Plenty of companies have falling and they've turned themselves around. Why TNA cannot do this is a mystery. I guess TNA will always be hated for not so intellegent reasons.
The whole "the network isn't promoting us properly" is the biggest fallacy in professional wrestling, hauled out any time a company that isn't the WWE doesn't do as well as people would like. You heard it constantly in ECW, you heard it at the tail end of WCW, and you hear it now, with TNA. People have been very quick to forget the marketing blitz that came with the introduction of Hulk Hogan to TNA. The reality of it is is that there is a limited amount of advertising available to promote a network's own shows, because the way television networks make their money is by selling that advertising space. Every time a network uses an advertising slot to promote one of their own shows, that's money they aren't making selling it to someone else. So you budget your advertising time according to how effective it would be in garnering new viewers for the product (and hence those advertisements.)
TNA's existence isn't a mystery to professional wrestling fans. They know it's there, they just haven't had much interest in the collective sense. It doesn't make much sense to advertise a product heavily to people, costing yourself money, if you don't feel it will get you a large amount of new viewers.
Plenty of companies have falling and they've turned themselves around. Why TNA cannot do this is a mystery.
True- there are stories about companies who have fucked up, turned things around, and became successful. However, what is
way more common is that those companies continue to fail, burning a financial hole in their owner's pockets, until they finally decide to shut things down. It's no mystery why TNA hasn't been able to turn around- people have been calling this, step by step, as it's happened for the past four years. They invested their money and talent extremely poorly. They spent millions of dollars and centered their programming around two nearly sixty-year old men, ignoring the previous years that they had spent building up their own talent, which turned into wasted talent capital. Their financial backers lost faith in the product, and ceased their financial investment, leading to a situation last year where their talent walked out (had 'paperwork issues') last July. They invested in an ultra-expensive road tour a full two years after they had lost any possible momentum they had earned by signing that sixty-year old man.
TNA failing to turn themselves around isn't any kind of mystery, unless you've committed yourself to not understanding the reasons why they're in the hole they've dug for themselves. We have plenty of those people here. (For those keeping up with trends, the latest line is "well, TNA couldn't have competed in today's wrestling market no matter what.")
The rooster, if they lose some stars then they need to build new ones. Stop trying to be any promotion and be TNA. That means build the X Division and Tag Division like they have been doing. Push and make a few stars an get them out on TV shows. They could have done this with Magnus. Promote themselves and make new stars.
I don't know if Terry Taylor could help things.
They could have done this with Magnus, except for the slight problem of no one caring about Magnus. They tried to hot-shot a guy who had no momentum to begin with, and surprise, people didn't buy it. TNA is already doing this, falling back into 2008 mode, but now it's too little, too late. The fans that stopped watching TNA once it became The Hulk and Eric Show aren't coming back in droves; they've moved on to other promotions, or have stopped watching professional wrestling all together. Impressions are everything, and unless you're a die-hard who's committed to TNA through thick and thin, TNA has the stink of the Little Engine That Couldn't.
TNA not only has to start back at Square Two, now that they've lost their financial backers and their network; they have to start at Square Two, while dealing with people who are familiar with how badly they fucked up going through Squares Three and Four. Their talks with other networks could be an actual thing that exists, but more and more this has the stink of an Eric Bischoff cannibalization operation, complete with controlled leaks through which management can claim plausible deniability. ("I could have saved TNA, if a network would have just agreed to give us free television space and only get paid if I was successful.")
Who knows- by no means am I ruling out a new television deal. The great thing about professional wrestling is that there's almost always someone fresh who's ready to believe the con. Right now TNA really doesn't have anything to offer another network (one million viewers in prime-time isn't shit), so my suggestion would be to pin your hopes on TNA's finding a sucker, then hoping for a miracle to happen.
For what it's worth, all the networks that have been mentioned as being 'interested in TNA' have dramatically less reach than SpikeTV. WGN America is the closest, reaching around 77 million viewers, which is three-fourths of SpikeTV. Velocity comes up next, with slightly more than half the reach of TNA. If you don't get the channel on your television, you can't watch the show. In any "TNA in 2015" situation, they're being watched by less people, which means less financial investment into the product. You'll continue to see six-eight weeks of tapings in advance, featuring talent that you haven't heard much about. You'll likely see larger names from TNA's past brought in for short runs to hype the product, but TNA will have to give up their demands for television, PPV and iPPV exclusivity for that to happen.
Any situation in which TNA turns themselves around and becomes that super-successful company would involve a large cash investment into the company, and any window in which a new owner would come in and provide that has closed. Any network not run by idiots would demand an ownership share in order to provide that of their own accord. (Hi, Spike!) Barring the baby angles scenario, where cherubs fly in with giant bags of money, TNA will (best case) spend the next couple of years shrinking to a size commiserate with their financial investment, and they will always have trouble convincing a network that they're worth keeping around.
