TNA President Dixie Carter recently spoke with Brian Fritz of SportingNews.com to promote last night’s Impact Wrestling premiere on Destination America. The full interview is available at this link. Below are some highlights:
Impact Wrestling changes in 2015:
“We’re also going to be looking at making some changes to the show in 2015. When you tune in Wednesday night, it’s going to be a great live wrestling show. There’s going to be some exciting surprises that happen on it but there will also be some amazing matches. But as you start to watch the shows through the year you’ll see the changes that we’ll be working on. A lot of those will be pulling the curtain back a little more than we have in the past and seeing cameras in different positions and production is going to be shot differently and we’re going to be trying some new things with the announcers. So, we’re really trying to look at the product with fresh eyes focusing very much on what we do best, the in-ring product like we did this past summer but at the same time working on really making the show have a much, much different feel.”
Leaving Spike TV:
“Well, I think we had been there a long time and it was a fantastic relationship. I talked to (Spike TV president) Kevin Kay early on in the negotiating and said look we don’t want it just to be status quo. We feel like to grow on Spike we have to have more programming and take things to a whole other level. Viacom has tapped him to go more scripted so that was going to be a bigger challenge for him than it had even before. I think change is good and I feel like we’ve got a network with fresh eyes and is really excited. It’s a smaller network. It’s a smaller network that’s part of a much bigger network globally for us. It’s a worldwide deal we made with them. It’s not just for one, two-hour show and we’ve got a great opportunity.”
Support from Destination America:
“I think you’ll see over the next couple of weeks what they’re planning on doing, the media that they’re planning on buying. They’re running commercials across all ten of their major networks, supporting it digitally, in print and radio, everything. It’s a smaller network that we’re on but we’ve never had that kind of massive exposure before. And that’s what we need. People will eventually find it. Some people don’t have Destination America and that’s going to be tougher for us because we are dealing with, like I said, a network that’s smaller but we’re part of such a big family that’s putting so many resources behind us. As we grow, Destination America … it’s just going to make that relationship that much more valuable.”
Going to Friday nights:
“I think I’ll tell you in a few months if I like being on Friday nights. They presented us with a lot of research and felt very strongly about Friday nights being a potential for them. +3’s is how people look at ratings nowadays, it’s not overnight ratings. With your +3 numbers, you have a much bigger chance for your +3 number over a weekend versus only, like if we were staying on Wednesday, that would be Thursday, Friday and you would have part of Saturday. It’s just an overall strategy. They feel really strongly about it. Wrestling has been successful on Friday nights and is no longer there and so we’ll see how we’ll do.”
