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As we reported over the weekend, Ring Of Honor on Destination America will lose its 8 p.m. airing for at least two weeks, starting on 7/29. Destination America wants to try other shows in the 8 p.m. hour, before Impact Wrestling, and see how they do. The change was communicated to ROH in advance, unlike when the Network moved TNA’s Impact from Friday to Wednesday last month.
There has been a lot of speculation over the weekend as to what the move means to ROH, TNA and wrestling on the network overall. Here’s my take on the issue.
ROH:
ROH signed a 26 week deal with Destination America, which runs through the end of November. Obviously, the network is honoring its end by still airing the program. At the end of the deal, should the sides go separate ways, ROH will be fine. As it now, ROH is getting extra money from the network with no extra expense to them. They run their show on their stations over the weekend, then get paid by the network to air a rerun of the program on Wednesday. All of the revenue from the deal is incremental for ROH. If they part ways, they are back where they were, as content for Sinclair stations around the country. Plus, they now have national exposure on a network that reaches around 50% of the country and could be appealing to another network. If the sides reach a new deal, they obviously keep benefitting from the incremental income that it brings in.
TNA:
Unlike ROH, the revenue coming in from Destination America is the primary funding source that is keeping the company going. As it is, TNA has been forced to drastically alter how it does business due to the drop off in rights fees that occurred when they left Spike TV. Earlier this year, a memo circulated via the network saying that TNA would be canceled at the end of September. A week later, Destination America brought ROH on board and moved TNA to Wednesday nights, with no advanced notice to the company. It’s fair to say that if the network decided to move away from wrestling, TNA would find itself in critical, critical condition. If they were not able to find another network to take them on, either the Carter family would have to pour money into the TNA to keep it alive in hopes of finding a new television home, they would have to find another investor, or they would go out of business.
Destination America:
There is no positive way to look at this move. If the network were happy with and committed to the Wednesday night wrestling block, they would not have started testing shows in the 8 p.m. time slot. They would have left the night in tact. The fact that they are doing this is telling. It’s no secret that since bringing TNA on earlier this year, the network has felt that wrestling has underperformed and not met their expectations in terms of viewership vs. dollars paid for the programming. Given that they have an out clause with TNA, they could stop airing Impact at any time and move away from wrestling altogether by December, when ROH’s deal is up, if they choose to (and that is provided that they don’t have an out clause to ROH).
The next few months will be watched very closely to see what Destination America does. If they move away from wrestling, ROH will be fine while it very well may sound the death knell for TNA.
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