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.

TNAWrestling.com also has this problem. If you head over to their site you immediately get a blaring loud version of their “TNA Today” video or one of Don West’s Insane Deals yelling at you. This is one of the primary reasons why I stay away from that site. Why can’t they just leave the YouTube video there in an “off” position? Are they afraid that I won’t be able to figure out how to push the “play” button? Are they afraid that I won’t push that play button at all? Don’t I have a right to not push that button if, let’s say, I’m on my lunch break at work? Annoying.

And the most aggravating advertisements of all are those ones that say, “Congratulations. You’ve been selected to receive a free Apple iPod.” Bullshit! Those advertisements are total crap. For those of you that don’t know, they are for “freebie” sites where you essentially turn yourself (and whatever digital platform you can offer such as e-mail, blogging, personal site, etc) into a marketing tool for a variety of companies. Once you reach a certain number of people, you get a free iPod sent to you. The catch? You’re marketing services that sometimes cost $1 or $2 for the “trial” period and you need to include your credit card information in the required information. Plus, you need something like 5 or 6 people to sign up underneath you before you can get anything for free. The advertisement should say:

“Congratulations. You’ve been selected to have your identity stolen. We think that you just might be dumb enough to click on this link and give us your credit card information. Oh, free Apple iPod.”

Morons. To all website designers and developers out there – STOP this crap! Do NOT have automatic videos playing, do NOT put up advertisements that talk to the web surfer, and do NOT put up your own promotional propaganda and set it to auto-play. It’s incredibly annoying!