Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,894
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Post by Sephiroth on Dec 21, 2015 10:03:18 GMT -5
Speaking seriously (insert Lance Storm pic): Kurt has a point in that TNA needed to eventually start touring, that is an absolute given. But they were in no way ready to do so, especially not on the scale Hogan pushed them to. They were actually on an upward trend at the time, but they should have taken it slowly. The first step should have been to do more house shows and maybe add an extra PPV each year-perhaps the oft proposed all KO PPV? And to suggest the move to Monday nights against WWE was a good idea is sheer lunacy.
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Post by cabbageboy on Dec 21, 2015 10:18:04 GMT -5
Here's the thing: If TNA didn't try to expand big time in early 2010, when exactly would they have done it? They had just brought Hogan and Bischoff in, brought in guys like Hardy and Van Dam, had the guys they already had. The MNW stuff was foolish and ill advised, but at some point TNA did have to try and tour like a, you know, real wrestling promotion. That's always been TNA's problem. They were never a real wrestling promotion from day 1. They started as a weekly PPV series, then became a television show taped at one location. TNA was basically like watching WCW Saturday Night if WCW didn't actual run shows.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,894
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Post by Sephiroth on Dec 21, 2015 12:36:59 GMT -5
Here's the thing: If TNA didn't try to expand big time in early 2010, when exactly would they have done it? They had just brought Hogan and Bischoff in, brought in guys like Hardy and Van Dam, had the guys they already had. The MNW stuff was foolish and ill advised, but at some point TNA did have to try and tour like a, you know, real wrestling promotion. That's always been TNA's problem. They were never a real wrestling promotion from day 1. They started as a weekly PPV series, then became a television show taped at one location. TNA was basically like watching WCW Saturday Night if WCW didn't actual run shows. They were just starting to you around with tv tapings outside the Impact Zone, I believe. They needed to just work their way into doing it more and more, slowly building up the fan base for it until they were touring most of the time. Jumping all in like that was way too much to take in at once.
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Post by "Mr Wonderdick" Dick Dastardly on Dec 21, 2015 12:51:22 GMT -5
I bet this interview was hacked. His brain was hacked. SOLOMON CROWE DEBUT CONFIRMED.
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Post by alexwrightspackage on Dec 21, 2015 13:22:56 GMT -5
They could've done what NXT does and hold 85% of their shows in one place, but have some special events outside their home?
I mean...I dont know if you could ever equate them in terms of popularity, but still.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Dec 21, 2015 13:31:35 GMT -5
Well other wrestler's kind of say the same thing that TNA needed to start traveling so he is not totally wrong. The problem wasn't taking the show on the road because TNA was doing that before Hogan/Bischoff came in. The problem was TNA had no backup plans if it didn't work and money ran out. Instead of keeping the Impact Zone as a backup and making small spurts into different markets, they cut that lifeline and seriously overestimated the demand for TNA. They ran through their budget after a month of tapings and made steep budget cuts. They tried to be WWE without having WWE money. Well that and they refused to advertise
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2015 13:47:47 GMT -5
......well, somebody scoop him out. It's only a river in Egypt.
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Post by Zombie Mod is not a ghoul. on Dec 21, 2015 15:40:44 GMT -5
Someone check to see if he's been doing moonsaults again. they tried, he just moonsaulted off them
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Dec 21, 2015 19:41:36 GMT -5
It's not wrong that TNA eventually needed to start touring. The thing is, before Impact went out on tour, TNA was doing house shows. And those house shows weren't drawing. They needed to figure out a way to get people to go to these shows first before they started sending the cameras out with them.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Dec 22, 2015 3:42:34 GMT -5
It's not wrong that TNA eventually needed to start touring. The thing is, before Impact went out on tour, TNA was doing house shows. And those house shows weren't drawing. They needed to figure out a way to get people to go to these shows first before they started sending the cameras out with them. They should have just swallowed their pride and had their house shows in the crappy little armories and civic centers that NXT does when they have house shows in Orlando.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,894
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Post by Sephiroth on Dec 22, 2015 8:00:22 GMT -5
It's not wrong that TNA eventually needed to start touring. The thing is, before Impact went out on tour, TNA was doing house shows. And those house shows weren't drawing. They needed to figure out a way to get people to go to these shows first before they started sending the cameras out with them. They should have just swallowed their pride and had their house shows in the crappy little armories and civic centers that NXT does when they have house shows in Orlando. That's part of why the whole deal with Hogan was such a fiasco. Hogan could have had some definite value to the company as a spokesman to help promote their house shows and/or tv tapings outside the Impact Zone; once you book a location to do a show, you get Hogan to do all the local radio programs and podcasts, any kind of autograph signings or even tv appearances, and make sure that every time he reminds people "We're going to be at So-And-So location on Such-And-Such date, get you're tickets now brother!" But he had absolutely no value as a full time ring performer, and allowing him to upend a formula that was already drawing ratings and had carried the company pretty far from their beginnings already was stupid beyond words, especially after the example of WCW.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Dec 22, 2015 8:16:33 GMT -5
TNA needed to take little steps to get away from the Impact Zone, but that wasn't what Hogan and Bischoff wanted. Bischoff knew how much going on the road would cost yet pushed for it anyway and Dixie listened to him as he was running the production company making Impact at that point, he knew how much it would cost, yet pushed for making a clean break anyway which is unforgivable. He left the company homeless, bleeding money, stripped of everything that made it unique, with everyone in the main event scene more famous for working elsewhere. Booking the show around Hogan and his whims killed the (Just about) profitable PPV side of the business, shaved hundreds of thousands off the Impact audience and made it skew older and older until COPS reruns started to draw a better rating for less money.
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lionheart21
Patti Mayonnaise
Once did a thing...
Posts: 30,520
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Post by lionheart21 on Dec 22, 2015 11:23:06 GMT -5
They should have just swallowed their pride and had their house shows in the crappy little armories and civic centers that NXT does when they have house shows in Orlando. That's part of why the whole deal with Hogan was such a fiasco. Hogan could have had some definite value to the company as a spokesman to help promote their house shows and/or tv tapings outside the Impact Zone; once you book a location to do a show, you get Hogan to do all the local radio programs and podcasts, any kind of autograph signings or even tv appearances, and make sure that every time he reminds people "We're going to be at So-And-So location on Such-And-Such date, get you're tickets now brother!" But he had absolutely no value as a full time ring performer, and allowing him to upend a formula that was already drawing ratings and had carried the company pretty far from their beginnings already was stupid beyond words, especially after the example of WCW. Also doesn't help that whenever he was interviewed for something, he never even brought up TNA. They hired a spokesman who never even hyped them as a company.
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ICBM
King Koopa
Didn't know we did status updates here now
Posts: 12,288
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Post by ICBM on Dec 22, 2015 11:23:30 GMT -5
Their expansion attempt was necessary and timely. It had to be then or status quo would have kept them leveled off adding a few thousand fans over a longer period. But if fell onto its ass. You gamble and some times you lose. They could have mitigated the potential losses but did not. I understand the thought behind leaving the impact zone (Cortez burning his ships) but with this they should have left an out.
Further a slower deliberate expansion after Hogan/Bischoff came in to grow the power base might have worked better and then you have a fall back if it slips or fails. (Do a concentration run at the north east while you still hold Florida, Alabama, GA, TX and TN). In three yrs you then sit firmly on the entire eastern US. Instead they just went all over but had no experience or infrastructure to sustain them.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,894
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Post by Sephiroth on Dec 22, 2015 12:23:14 GMT -5
Their expansion attempt was necessary and timely. It had to be then or status quo would have kept them leveled off adding a few thousand fans over a longer period. But if fell onto its ass. You gamble and some times you lose. They could have mitigated the potential losses but did not. I understand the thought behind leaving the impact zone (Cortez burning his ships) but with this they should have left an out. Further a slower deliberate expansion after Hogan/Bischoff came in to grow the power base might have worked better and then you have a fall back if it slips or fails. (Do a concentration run at the north east while you still hold Florida, Alabama, GA, TX and TN). In three yrs you then sit firmly on the entire eastern US. Instead they just went all over but had no experience or infrastructure to sustain them. Agree and disagree. It actually was a good time for it-their ratings were at the highest they had ever been and they were starting to explore new revenue sources like toys, sponsors, and video games. But trying to go on tour full time just wasn't something they were in a position to do at the time. As I said in a previous post, the first step should have been adding more house shows and, as you suggest, expanding the range of where you do those house shows. Maybe add an extra POV to the lineup each year. And start doing some tv shows outside the Impact Zone, but don't go abandoning a situation that has served you incredibly well for that long. So for instance, maybe do a special anniversary episode of Impact from their old stomping grounds in Memphis, but be back to the studio in Florida the next week. Something I've said before is they should have tried to shill Universal to let them do an occasional tv show from a studio in California so they could expand their audience range and maybe even start running Cali. house shows. Then just slowly add more and more tapings outside the Impact Zone as you slowly increase your revenue and audience. And on that same note, yes, if you have the chance to sign Hulk Hogan to help increase your promotion's public visibility, then absolutely do it. But DON'T sign Eric Bischoff, The Nasty Boys, Brother Brutus, Bubba the Love Sponge, or Brooke Hogan-because not one of them brings anything to the table you need at that time. The roster was already well stacked, they already had plenty of big names from the past on hand, and the booking team already had a formula that worked just fine. Use Hogan to shill the promotion and move merchandise, the best uses for him at this stage of his career. If you put him in tv, do it only once in a while and be sure to hype it beforehand so you will get fans to tune in. He's of no use as a full time performer because he can't go in the ring and fans have already seen him work with all the obvious names many times before. And if he protests, remind him that all the other legends you already have signed aren't complaining about their deals and that Vince McMahon had already turned him down.
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Juice
El Dandy
Wrong? Oh he can tell ya about being wrong.
I'm the one who raised you from perdition.
Posts: 8,172
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Post by Juice on Dec 22, 2015 22:54:06 GMT -5
Mac from its always sunny in philadelphia said "economics 101, gotta spend money to make money".
It was a good idea to bring them in with a filter, but they didn't ever try to. Bischoff and Hogan had free reign and made bad decisions among good ones. The bad outweighed the good.
They did kill the company but only because they were allowed to.
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Post by This Player Hating Mothman on Dec 23, 2015 0:06:01 GMT -5
Bottom line, you can't expect to be financially successful going on the road for TV when your house shows run out of the core "base" of your product aren't even able to sell out. TNA needed to focus on growth in a promotional sense, using Hogan to actually sell the product instead of himself. Try and market themselves as a major, alternative wrestling promotion and try and find ways to attach themselves to other forms of media. WCW had Sturgis (although to an ill-advised extent), and NXT has stuff going at music festivals now; it's just a way to get their product out there to a group who they might not be able to reach through marketing in other ways. They could easily have played on the country music connection and their Nashville roots to establish themselves as the distinctly southern-style promotion with some good cross-branding. But instead their idea of promotion was to hire celebrities to show up for garbage segments, sometimes people whose fame came from shows that were direct time slot competition to them. It was bonkers.
They'd lost viewers after the Monday Night "Wars" fiasco, and building up a larger viewer base should have been their first goal. Then, once they could sell tickets and fill a venue for money instead of as a theme park attraction, they could have looked into branching out. I don't understand this talk of how that was the time where they had to go on the road; they hadn't outgrown the Impact Zone and demand was clearly not there for it. It was very much not the time for them to take those risks, even without the hindsight of knowing they were going to bleed money even harder by doing so.
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ICBM
King Koopa
Didn't know we did status updates here now
Posts: 12,288
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Post by ICBM on Dec 23, 2015 6:55:36 GMT -5
Sephiroth, agreed on the stiffs they brought in but I don't recall brother Bruti coming in. I know it was rumored but I don't remember him coming in. I still agree with bringing in Bischoff though. The filter could have worked but you are correct they never tried it. The only person in TNA with the stature to stand up to both of them to filter was Dixie Carter and she had zero frame of reference to do so. If she did than it was ill conceived notions. She is not a wrestling person. Vince McMahon is the only person to ever constrain both Hogan and Bischoff and get results. Turner gave both the checkbook and let em go. Turner execs started applying controls to Bischoff but had no idea how to do so and the results speak for themselves. Bischoff is creative and understands marketing extremely well. TNA had no clue. But he didn't get it done in tna
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Post by jp49er80 on Dec 23, 2015 7:29:12 GMT -5
I'm starting to understand where Kurt's original wide-eyed dork WWF persona came from.
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markymark
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
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Post by markymark on Dec 23, 2015 17:53:54 GMT -5
Here's the thing: If TNA didn't try to expand big time in early 2010, when exactly would they have done it? They had just brought Hogan and Bischoff in, brought in guys like Hardy and Van Dam, had the guys they already had. The MNW stuff was foolish and ill advised, but at some point TNA did have to try and tour like a, you know, real wrestling promotion. That's always been TNA's problem. They were never a real wrestling promotion from day 1. They started as a weekly PPV series, then became a television show taped at one location. TNA was basically like watching WCW Saturday Night if WCW didn't actual run shows. Going head to head with Raw was stupid, if they wanted so much to compete with the WWE, they shouldve done it with Smackdown, and spend money to make MONEY in advertising(As Hogan said in one of his interviews).
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