Like many people with a DVR, I have a bad habit of letting certain shows build up over time before I sit down to watch them. It’s not that you want to build up this backlog of shows to watch, it’s just that the demands on a person’s time these days are so crazy that it’s hard to spend any time watching a television show. Not good news for the broadcast networks, I guess. Anyway, this past weekend was a great example of what happens when those shows continue to build up on my DVR…I watched some 20 hours of Total Nonstop Action’s wrestling show – Impact.
Maybe it wasn’t 20 hours of action (you have to factor in commercials), but it was ten of their weekly, two-hour shows that I had to push through. I’m not complaining, since I thought it was a pretty entertaining 20 hours. However, I have to do a better job of watching Impact on a more consistent basis. Between a two hour Impact every week and an hour and a half of Cheers every night, my DVR gets clogged up to the point of insanity.
In any event, I thought that the Impact shows were fun to watching and entertaining. There was a lot of focus on the Main Event Mafia, which grew to be tiresome, and only a minimal focus on some of the undercard talent. That’s a shame because there are really some talented folks under contract to TNA. The two best developments that I saw on the ten episodes of the show were 1) the removal of Don West from the color commentator position and having his replaced by Taz and 2) the creation of a tag team championship for the Knockout division. Those are two major steps in the right direction for the company, but adding new tag team titles will probably mean that there will need to be more television time in order to showcase all of the talent.
If I were TNA, I’d try to get a one hour show on one of the Viacom channels (either VH1 or MTV or even staying on Spike). There’s no reason that the promotion couldn’t get a one hour slot on one of those channels and focus on advancing some of the undercard storylines.
Anyway, overall I’m glad I made the switch from being a primarily WWE fan to a primarily TNA fan. Not that TNA doesn’t have a variety of areas that it needs some help with (it’s time to break out of the Impact Zone and have a traveling show already!), but it’s just a better product in my mind.
Your comment, “There’s no reason that the promotion couldn’t get a one hour slot on one of those channels and focus on advancing some of the undercard storylines.”, ignores the fact that programming dollars are limited in the Viacom family of networks. Also, it clear that advertising spend rates are down due to the poor economic conditions.
Mike,
Thanks for the comment! My comment does ignore the fact that programming dollars are limited in the Viacom network, but as a fan of the promotion, I’m speaking more from the stance of a guy who wants to see more from TNA. And while advertising spending rates are down, they are down across the entire media spectrum, so I would suspect that all programming is affected by the economic downturn.
Thanks again!
Joe
Wow, I think I’m the biggest wrestling fan I know, and I can say with certainty that trying to watch that much TNA at once would kill me. The booking on that show makes my brain hurt. the lack of actual wrestling is also a major negative to me. Long ago I gave up watching it live because with commercials and all the pointless talking and stupidity it’s impossible not to lose focus and start doing other things or fall asleep waiting for something good to happen. Before they worry about getting another show to advance storylines, they should bring in writers who are capable of creating logical storylines that make sense not only from week to week but also from segment to segment. Impact insults me in some way pretty much every week without fail, and the only reason I watch TNA at all is because I love wrestling and I want to see the company do well because I know they have it in them to do so. I also watch it because were I not to see it with my own eyes, I would never believe that the retardity that makes air could actually have happened.
“Retardity” – I now have a new word for my vocabulary!
What bothers me about both WWE and TNA is the excessive amount of time they take for ring entrances. This isn’t the late 1990’s where wrestling fans were crazy about the long, drawn-out entrances. I’ve noticed (after watching 20 hours of TNA), that you can essentially fast forward through the third and second to last segments of the show since they are filled with ring entrances and the first 5 minutes of a match that will end after the commercial break.
Feel free to enjoy retardity. As far as I know it’s my word, never seen it anywhere else. Now that I’ve said that I’ll likely be finding out differently in 3…2…1…
RETARDITY!!