Thanks for joining me again, and welcome to Headlines and Scrutiny. Hopefully, you enjoyed the holidays, I certainly needed the recuperation and I’m glad to be back to just tired instead of both sick and tired.
A site note before the report continues. I’d like to again recommend another TNA column up on the site. Chris Vining has made another valuable contribution to the website with his column “TNA Makes A Good Decision.” Like me, Vining has been one of a loyal few who have followed TNA and brings an informed view to the table. He also has an interesting view on the new on-demand PPV service the TNA website is now providing (see news section). There are also some very interesting comments from people within the company.
As NWA:TNA storylines have continued to focus on an eventual match with Jeff Jarrett and Hulk Hogan, Hogan’s unpredictability has once again postponed a possible Bound For Glory PPV event, that is dependant entirely on him, until at least mid-to-late Spring 2004.
The postponement, which also applies to a January 4 Tokyo, Japan show at the Tokyo Dome, was because of Hogan’s knee rehabilitation (following arthroscopic surgery) reportedly not going as well as expected. Despite the surprise with which the announcement came to light this past week, officials within TNA have been expecting the decision about Hogan’s physical ability to wrestle for at least a week.
Jeff Jarrett made the announcement to wrestlers backstage before the TNA PPV this past week, saying that the earliest the PPV would be could be as late as May or June. Hogan, however, did not commit to those dates either, and has yet to sign a contract with a company so hopeful of a 10/30 PPV that it changed plans immediately and pulled strings and favors within the PPV industry to allow the special Sunday event to occur. It should also be noted that Hogan has yet to appear on the program in person or via interview (when a telephone interview idea was proposed, Hogan said no due to a doctor’s appointment on the Wednesday night in question, according to a Wrestling Observer report).
Tenay was the instrument used to convey the information to a crowd unofficially aware of plans for the PPV to be early next year, in a delay which is currently expected to span 7 months.
The credibility of the company, with fans, employees, and industry officials has no doubt diminished amidst this juggling. Fans and employees are wary of Hogan ever working with the company, either because of the brilliance of a publicity stunt that would once again get Hogan’s name out in the public again, at the expense of TNA, or the time juxtaposition between any TNA plans, and WWE’s 20th annual WrestleMania PPV at Madison Square Garden in New York. “I have a feeling he’s worked it out with Vince (McMahon) already,” wrote TBL’s Eddie in a discussion on the topic. Such rumors have been discussed since Hogan walked out of the company earlier this year. Industry officials likely feel gypped and in this case, no publicity may be the best publicity, within the television and PPV industry.
The whole purpose of the huge event was to make a statement, with Hogan being used, but in the process of hurrying the process, the process may have been inverted, with Hogan using TNA, and TNA drawing a bad reputation before negotiations have really had the opportunity to get underway, with the exception of preliminary negotiations currently happening between TNA and the Chicago-based Superstation WGN (there is an article on this today).
The door still looks to be open for the PPV, however. Jimmy Hart has made trips in recent weeks to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and they are close to confirming an airplane hanger on the base as an arena for the event. Other locations continue to be considered, and Las Vegas becomes a greater possibility with more advanced notice to obtain a license to be able to promote an event there as well as confirm an arena or large hotel.
Looking at this from TNA’s angle, their single biggest mistake was building television around someone who has not signed a contract, twice. Oddly enough, Vince McMahon did the same with Hogan within the past two years. TNA, however, does have footage of their world champion beating up Hulk Hogan, and last week they did an angle that might serve as a way to bury Hogan if he never does come, an angle in which Jeff Jarrett declared Hulk Hogan dead.
But the joke’s on who?
In the largest negotiations of such type since TNA’s director of finding a TV deal, former TNN (now Spike TV) president Brian Hughes took his post on April 30th, TNA is in the final preliminary stages of discussion with the WGN Superstation to air a weekly television program on the network.
The move from PPV to cable would be an extreme ideological deviation from founder Jerry Jarrett’s original vision for the company, a weekly alternative program that people would pay to see as disgruntled, but optimistic wrestling fans. This move shows that TNA is considering competing with WWE and offering a product similar to theirs. During the year and several months that TNA has been alive, they have realized that it is so difficult to break even with a PPV product, because out of 73 shows they’ve promoted, I’d be surprised if 4 or 5 broke even.
Another question is if the idea would actually still be to promote towards a weekly PPV show, a bimonthly show (like ECW), an even less often PPV (WOW), or what exactly the plan would be. At this point, the major standstill in negotiations revolves around price. According to two reports, WGN charges a fairly strict rate of $25,000 to $75,000 per hour dependent on timeslot. Paying money for a bad slot is ridiculous (possibly even suicide), so the question has to be whether to pay WGN a fee of around $3.6 million annually to be broadcast on WGN, the contractual specifics being that WGN retains two minutes per week of advertisement time, with TNA having the option to sell the rest of their ad time, like WWE RAW does, to sell the time back to WGN, like WWE Smackdown does, or to not sell any additional ad time and use it for the show itself, like MLW Underground TV does. TNA airs weekly on iNDemand for a fee of half their buyrate proceeds, with a slightly stricter contract. TNA could lower the WGN contract if they decided to purchase advertisement time on the network. The reward would presumably not be great, but those are untested waters. Before I examine the deal on an historical level, I will look at one of the biggest problems here, which is not TNA, but the network itself.
While WGN is available on both DirecTV and the Dish Network, they have poor cable penetration and brand awareness. As of December 2001, WGN had penetration in approximately 52.72% of American households, with an estimated universe of 55,624,000 households, according to Nielsen Media Research. Comparatively, TNN had 80.07% penetration, TNT had 80.71%, and MTV had 78.56%, in the same month. At the rates offered by the network, TNA would only be receiving a limited market of people from which to pull simply to get rid of the $10 price tag.
TNA is not the first promotion to consider paying for a TV deal, and they probably won’t be the last. Luckily, at this point, they have the opportunity to look back at other products and see what has resulted for them. I will focus on the WOW Women of Wrestling promotion for a moment to illustrate my point. They’re goal was similar, to buy up late night or early morning time slots for their programming, and then eventually run a PPV show. They lost millions even in the simple venture. There is no indication that TNA wouldn’t follow the same path, especially considering that they would be paying quite a huge amount of money, for minimal exposure.
If TNA does end up on TV, they will have to be able to appeal to the masses, and there is some doubt that their current product can do that. Are they an alternative for former fans; or a product to attract new ones? Can they fill both roles?
Wrestler Jerry Tuite, who has wrestled under the names Malice in NWA: TNA, The Wall in WCW, and more recently, Gigantes in All Japan, died of what is being called an acute heart attack on December 6 at 1:45 p.m. Japan time (11:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time). He was 36.
Tuite had completed his tour with All Japan yesterday and had been staying at the Narita Hotel. La Parka and Nosawa ate lunch with Tuite earlier in the day and Parka came by his hotel room after dinner to say goodbye to him before leaving for a flight back to Mexico (or he was scheduled to go with him), and found him unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.
For the first several months of TNA’s existence, Tuite competed as Malice, as one of the top people in the company. On the debut show, Malice competed toe-to-toe with Ken Shamrock at the end of a “Gauntlet for the Gold” battle royal for the NWA Championship, in a match in which Ricky Steamboat served as referee, on June 19, 2002. Both won and then had a one-on-one match which Shamrock won for the title. Their feud continued through July 3, when Malice was once again defeated for the title. His strong push continued against Sabu and others, managed by James Mitchell, and a part of the New Church, but when TNA cutback initially on talent and production costs, so were his appearances in TNA, and he disappeared before the end of the year.
Tuite’s final match was as Gigantes, with Bull Buchanan, and Justin Credible against Tomoaki Honma, Kazushi Miyamoto, and Nobutaka Araya on Friday. His body is in the process of being transported to America, where he will be cremated.
After an average low-response Thanksgiving holiday show last week, NWA:TNA on PPV returned this week (12/3) with AJ Styles vs. Champion Jeff Jarrett for the NWA World Title.
The results were as expected with Jarrett going over AJ Styles in 19:26 to retain the NWA Championships. The match suffered from TNA’s idea of main event booking, which is that if you have the whole locker room run in, you’ve accomplished something. That is a frustrating anticlimactic cliffhanger. As weekly analysis as well as reaction to the one-cent special shows, that is not the case, and it comes off miserably, especially for an event that costs money. Regardless of whether it is an imitation of the classic WWE PPV shmazzes or not, it has to go. Plus, what’s the purpose of a 20-minute contest if you’re going to phone it in. Since the booking in this company is going down the drain, I’m also going to speak briefly on the role that Jeff Jarrett has in this company. It is absurd for Jarrett to control the day to day operations in TNA as well as be the top star, especially when such a move conflicts with logic. The TNA product is suffering from preferential booking and Styles can’t survive based on natural talent and charisma. Two months ago it was time to take AJ Styles to the next level as world champion. Two months ago it was time for Raven to stop playing with average mid card feuds and chew on something more appropriate for his talent level. Two months ago the same was true for CM Punk. Two months ago it was time for the X Division to mean something. Instead, it was more pertinent to set up a feud between Jarrett and Hulk Hogan, who never signed a contract, and set the whole show up around that. Maybe that worked it Puerto Rico, but this is not IWA. I’ve heard the argument a few times now that AJ Styles is being put over greatly since the original angle to cast him as the underdog. How? If you cast a former world champion as an underdog and then several weeks in a row he makes never legitimately overcomes those statements, then he embodies them. Booker T in WWE this year is a very good example, and his popularity, even within the all-knowing insider community, has taken a hit and it has nothing to do with his ability.
I’m not particularly enjoying what is being done with TNA’s tag team division, which now focuses around America’s Most Wanted, 3LK, Diamond & Swinger, and Glenn Gilberti & David Young. The booking has obviously been sacrificed in favor of—well I’m not sure what it was sacrificed for. Low Ki, who seems to be having a larger presence in the company of late, won a three-way match over Christopher Daniels and Kid Kash. Shane Douglas and Michael Shane beat Chris Sabin and Sonjay Dutt, who both are now faces. X went over Don Harris. AMW went over AMW and Gilbertti and Young. The Gathering and Raven lost against Abyss and the Redshirts.
Next week: Raven vs. Abyss; Julio Dinero & CM Punk vs. Northcutt & Legend; Kid Kash vs. Don Harris; Michael Shane vs. Christopher Daniels for the X Title; Ron Killings & BG James vs. Chris Harris and James Storm for the NWA Tag Team Championships; Roddy Piper.
News: You can now vote in the NWA:TNA year-end awards at the following address: http://www.tnabookings.com/awards/popup.html with the categories being superstar of the year, tag team of the year, match of the year, X superstar of the year, finisher of the year, TNA babe of the year, memorable moment of the year, and who to watch in 2004. Also as a scheduling note, I will run a special end-of-the-year examination of TNA in this space on or around December 27. If you have any thoughts, they are welcomed at trevor@thebalrogslair.com… NWA:TNA sent out a press release on 12/1 announcing their new streaming on-demand video service on the TNA website, which will offer new TNA shows on a minimum 60-day delay from the original telecast as well as all past shows for $6.95 a show or discounted packages that can offer savings of up to 2 dollars per show ordered. You can sign up by visiting the TNA website at www.nwatna.com and following the instructions for sign up.
Matchmaker: Trevor Hunnicutt
trevor@thebalrogslair.com
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