Question 2: Do you, or anyone you know, to the best of your knowledge, watch The Late Show with David Letterman on a regular basis?
I watch the late show 4 nights a week. In 2009 the Late Show averaged 3.9 million viewers.
Scenario: You run a retail business with multiple stores. You notice a drop-off in the sales in one of your stores. Previously loyal customers are leaving you, either to go to your competition, or just not buying from anyone. You hire someone with major name value in that particular field, and give that person the sole task of getting people interested in your floundering store.
This is a hilariously stupid scenario because this isn't at all how retail works. For you scenario an advertising agency would be your Hogan equivalent. As the purpose of Hogan was to raise awareness as would be the same case with an advertiser.
After a promising re-opening,
Re-opening a single store? Ok.
you notice that your new manager's numbers are steadily, and rapidly, dropping to below the levels that you hired this operson to rectify in the first place.
Why would you hire a manager to increase sales? Hulk Hogan isn't running TNA financially and his seat on the creative team is beneath Vince Russo's. He has no financial power over Dixie Carter or Jeff Jarrett.
The only changes that have been made to this store, since you hired this new manager were done after consulting that manager, and no other changes have been done in the area that would affect anyone's choices in this field.
I've already explained why your scenario is stupid but this literally doesn't make any sense.
How long would it take anyone with actual business sense to understand that the change in management, and the changes brought by that change, are unwelcome, and not working for the business?
There hasn't been a change in management at TNA. It's still a company run by Dixie Carter and Jeff Jarett.
"But, Rob! Those numbers are coming back up.
No on care's what your first name is. Stop putting it in your posts.
You can't just give up on that guy already." Let's go back to my retail example, then. If your new manager presided over a store that, literally, lost half of its business in a single quarter, would ANYONE keep that manager around?
Seriously, you're an idiot. Hulk Hogan is not TNA's manager. And an advertiser not a manager is the person responsible for getting people to show up at a retail outlet. Managers deal strictly with complaints. Complaints haven't been made about Hulk Hogan, seriously your analogy is terrible.
Again, that is exactly what happened with Hulk Hogan.
No, it is nothing like what happened with Hulk Hogan. Here's a better analogy that actually has relevance; TNA has suffered the exact same issues this year, that many television shows suffer.
First, TNA altered their time slot, after 8 years of one time slot people had worked TNA into their schedule. When shows move their time slot they often find viewers won't migrate with them. For further info google Friday Night Death Slot.
Hulk Hogan's arrival in TNA is not unlike a tv series adding a new character or utilizing guest stars. Hogan was intended to promote awareness of the TNA brand, due to his immediate results when he debuted in January, one could argue he did spread awareness, where this became a problem is that TNA made people aware of them and Spike then moved them back to Thursdays. Some people followed but some didn't, by the time TNA returned to Monday nights the hype had died down. There was no major advertising done by Spike like there had been for Hogan's debut, in that sense it was an advertising issue.
Hulk Hogan was brought in to spike the ratings, unfortunately Spike TV was unable to capitalize on that and because of that TNA's rating returned to normal. That combined with time-slot jumping lead to many who had grown accustomed to viewing TNA on Thursdays no longer watching the show, this is evidenced by the fact that TNA had a Thursday replay of iMPACT which often drew the same numbers as the Monday show, occasionally it drew better.
Red, you're almost right. Note the word "Almost." You certainly didn't note that word when you decided to whine about my math.
Well perhaps you shouldn't have tired insulting another user by declaring your mathematical skill.
I'll admit, had I used a calculator, instead of doing this in my head at 11 at night, I would have realized that it was closer to 1/9th of the audience that left.
The fact that you need to a calculator to figure out that 0.13 is not a 7th of 1.14, says a lot about your intelligence.
My bad. But, since we're, literally less than 3 percentage points of difference between the two, I doubt that anyone else will really hold that slight a mathmatical error against me. (The actual numbers for percentage lost were 11.4% lost. I claimed that it was 14.3%. Oops. My apologies.) If you really want the actual fraction, it's 5/44ths.
Try and make it sound as irrelevant as you want, you were still wrong. Just like you were with your "retail analogy".
But, then I went ahead and averaged those numbers from June 1, 2009- December 31, 2009. (That is 7 months, after all.) And, you know what? The ratings STILL went down! The average for the 7 months before Hogan started in TNA was a 1.05. What has the average been since Hogan has been in TNA? It's been a 1.01.
Scroll up, read my section addressing Hogan. Then shut up.
Now, I will grant that is a much smaller difference than if you look at the entire year for last year, but I also decided to look at the first 7 months of 2009, to get a direct comparison.
You looked at the last 7 months of TNA in 2009 and compared it to the first 7 months of TNA in 2010, then you realized comparing the first 7 months of both years was more direct? You honestly wasted your time making a comparison that wasn't direct so you could then make one that was? Man I was wrong you're super intelligent
You know what? You might get a laugh out of this. The average ratings for the first 7 months of last year were a 1.2. So, TNA has lost over 1/8 of its audience, if you compare months to months. Well, if I'm allowed to use the word "Almost," TNA has "almost" lost 1/6th of is audience, if you compare month for month.
Yes and the January score of 1.5 was the highest rating ever scored in TNA's history. Your ridiculous attempts to blame this on Hogan are just that, ridiculous. The ratings decline was caused by mis-management on Spike TV. As soon as the Jan 4th iMPACT was done, they scaled back their advertising for TNA by a mile.
So, regardless of how you try to rationalize it, the Carter family is paying Hulk Hogan what is, no doubt, a shitload of money,
You know this how?
[QUOT]and his influence has netted the company no discernable gain. At least, not in any area in which I can see.[/QUOTE]
Yes, the highest rating in your companies history is terrible. Here's a factor that too many people on this forum are entirely ignorant of, TNA doesn't rely soley on the US market. The major reason Ric Flair was brought in was due to his international appeal. That was even revealed in a statement by TNA, specifically the popularity of Ric Flair outside the US, same goes for Hogan. There's a reason why TNA dominates the WWE in multiple countries outside the US.
And, frankly, I'd appreciate it if you learned how to read.
I'd appreciate it if you learnt how to graduate high school. Your posts have proven a few things, firstly you're terrible at maths, secondly you've almost no understanding of television, retail or advertising.
There's a reason I said "almost" the first time.
Because deep down you know you can't do maths?
And, on that note, I feel no need to revisit this topic. Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff have been a discernable, visible net loss for TNA, and I just proved it.
You havne't proven anything, for one you lack access to TNA's financial records, you have no idea if Hulk Hogan's merchandise sales are high or low, you obviously haven't accounted for TNA's ratings success outside of the US. You haven't taken into account a lot of things regarding Hulk Hogan's arrival.
What you have proven is that you know very little about television networks and how reliant on those networks, all programs are. You've shown no consideration, in your supposed "proof that Hogan ruins ratings" rant, for advertising or network support. And you're somewhat blind to the ways of the television viewer.
To put it simply, TNA's ratings are not able to judged on the merits of one person. Numerous areas in TNA's ratings increases and declines are completely overlooked by marks trying to write TNA off as a failure. Here's a checklist of things to consider before making any more statements about post-Hogan ratings.
1.) Time slot changes and how they affect viewership.
2.) Network support i.e. advertising
3.) Viewer choices, and this is a big one relating to the Monday night move. Many viewers do not solely watch wrestling, when TNA moved time slots they went into direct competition with RAW, but they also went in to indirect competition with every other television show on at the time. If you're naieve enough to believe that every person who watches TNA only watches TNA, then you'll believe anything. But think of this, during the Monday run, a re-run was broadcast during iMPACT's standard Thursday time slot. Often both Monday live broadcasts and Thursday re-runs would score the same rating, unless you think that every viewer who watched Monday, decided 3 days later to watch the exact same episode for its durationg you're an even bigger idiot than I already thought.
Trying to pin some massive amount of blame on Hulk Hogan is ridiculous. Hulk Hogan doesn't control Spike TV.
