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| TNA Impact sucks
Awesome little rant! Quote:
From Bryan Alvarez at f4wonline.com
I recalled that there was a TNA PPV that evening, and figured it would be pointless to preview that since by the time most people read the column the show would be over. I don't know why it was, but I suddenly had this urge to take a look back at last year's Against All Odds PPV. So I opened up an F4W back issue and scanned it.
I'll cut to the chase. TNA has the same main event last year as it did this year. And when I say the same, I mean not only was it Kurt Angle vs. Christian for the title, but it was Kurt Angle vs. Christian for the title with Samoa Joe as the special enforcer. What a fascinating coincidence. We also had a wacky Team 3-D streetfight, much like in 2008, and another goofball Abyss hardcore battle, though in 2007 it was Sting trying to beat the shit out of Abyss for his own good in a storyline that involved something about who Abyss's father was, or the big secret, or some such nonsense. The bottom line is that this storyline has been ongoing for a full year and still nobody cares.
So now I was really intrigued. What were the ratings like? After all, last year they only had an hour of Impact on Spike and this year they've got ONE HUNDRED PERCENT MORE, two hours in prime time. Surely things must be markedly better.
Well, no. Last year they did a 1.12 rating and 1.6 million viewers. That was a new record, in fact. This year they did a 1.11 and 1.6 million viewers. To be fair, they did set a record last week with 1.7 million viewers, but they lost those extras this week. If we're gonna give them that improvement, though, we can say that with one extra year of action and an extra 60 minutes per week, they've added 100,000 viewers.
That's the good news. Bad news is that they've added 0 new buyers. In fact, they've lost buyers from last year. Why? You will be stunned by the answer. I write it every month. IMPACT SUCKS.
It is ironic that I write the same thing every month and nothing ever changes, because TNA, as is evidenced above in black and white, has been doing the same thing for at least an entire fucking year and nothing has changed. I will try to preface my rant this month with some positive statements, though, so that I can at least say that my approach has changed.
TNA PPVs, including this one, are often really good. A man like me who has been subjected to the shitfest that is Impact week after week should just naturally hate everything about TNA and not even give the PPVs a chance. But I do my best to try to go into each PPV viewing with a clean slate, and I am happy to have done so here because in the end (aside from things I shall mention later), I really enjoyed Against All Odds. In fact, it was funny reading my recap from last year, because apparently there were many people who thought Against All Odds 2007 was the worst PPV ever, and I actually found things to enjoy about it. So I'm not a total meanie.
The PPVs, however, are not the best things about TNA. I have yet to attend one, but I have been told by fans and wrestlers that the best of TNA is the house shows. At the house shows you get nothing but wrestling. There are no fucking announcers screaming nonstop throughout the show, there are no lame comedy skits, you never have to go TO THE BACK after something great happens, it's just a bunch of really good wrestlers having really great matches. I suspect that if I only had to watch TNA house shows every week, TNA would be my favorite promotion around.
Now, back to reality. Impact sucks. I firmly believe, as the man who wrote Death of WCW, that this program is worse than either Nitro or Thunder ever was. I firmly believe that it is perhaps the worst program in the history of television. I certainly have never seen a program that was worse. Perhaps if you break down conversion percentages and viewership loss and such you can argue that Nitro or Thunder at certain points were more ineffective and thus worse shows. However, I have never felt the unbridled passionate hatred that I have for Impact while watching either Nitro or Thunder. They were never so maddeningly horrible for such long stretches of time. In fact, at the end they were often horrible because none of the writers cared and none of the wrestlers cared. Guys would go out and fuck around because it didn't matter. I laughed during Thunder, sometimes uproariously. In fact, right before the whole thing went kaput in March of 2001 I seem to recall both Nitro and Thunder really improving, even though it was too late.
Impact is the biggest waste of two hours there's ever been. It's not a vehicle to get over the wrestlers because they never get a chance to wrestle all that much. It's not a vehicle to sell PPVs, because as impressive as 1.7 million viewers may seem, it's actually less impressive because I would hazard a guess that this show is going to do about 17,000 buys, meaning all they've done with that viewership increase is drop their conversion percentage of viewers to buyers to an utterly pathetic one percent (1%). It's not a vehicle to make huge money in advertising revenue because, well, they're not making huge money in advertising revenue. What is it? What is the point of it? The entire point seems to be to draw ratings, and the ratings they draw and viewers they draw are approximately 1/4 of what WWE draws and roughly equal to what is drawn by ECW, the dark horse of the WWE family that is considered such a red-headed stepchild that they don't even get their own PPVs any more, much less monthly PPVs. And hey, drawing a quarter of the viewers of Raw would be awesome if they could draw a quarter of the buys for, say, No Way Out. Last year, the worst year for No Way Out since WWE started tracking on their corporate website, WWE did 210,000 buys for that show. This year's show will do better with the double Elimination Chambers and Cena fighting for the title, but hey, to make TNA feel better we'll say they'll do another 210,000. Impact does a quarter of the viewers of Raw and they're doing ONE TWELFTH the buyers. Way to go you fucking geeks.
It's funny that people always talk about how you have to concentrate on the main event because that's the match the people are buying. Well, this month on Impact they concentrated on everything BUT the main event. I still have no idea why Angle vs. Christian was taking place, and they didn't have them cut any promos on TV talking about the match. The entire month was all about Angle, Christian, Tomko and AJ and what side each guy was on in a war that doesn't seem to be taking place. Is there a huge tag match in the future that I'm unaware of? What war is brewing that Christian and Angle need an army? All I can think is that neither man thinks he can beat the other on his own and thus wants an army of dudes to run in. Hey, if that's the case AT LEAST TELL US THAT ON TELEVISION. Instead, it's all recruitment and no conceivable war. Better yet, we've got Samoa Joe involved for God knows what reason and he's promised a title shot for next month (already looking past this PPV), we've got Scott Steiner and Petey Williams feuding over a title shot (looking past the next two PPVs? I have no idea because we're still waiting for someone to get a title shot they were supposed to win on a PPV two months ago), and then there is Tomko, who actually pinned the champion in a non-title match and should conceivably get a title shot (three months down the road???) but it was never mentioned again the following week.
Oh yeah, I should mention that Tomko turned on Christian in the main event of this PPV, and they did an angle for Youtube afterwards where Tomko explained that he wasn't on Kurt's side, he merely turned on Christian because Christian interfered in his TV match with Angle. THE MATCH HE WON, THANKS TO CHRISTIAN.
This is the worst television show ever.
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