Views From The Turnbuckle: Three Easy Changes TNA Could Make To Get Better

Over the last few years, it seems like TNA is always going an era of change, with shifts in creative, the roster, the PPV schedule, the timeslots for Impact, where Impact has been taped, what day Impact is taped on, whether the show is live or not etc. While it is fun to label some grandiose plan that will get TNA on the right track, I have a few proposals that are mostly small changes that should be easy enough to do, but could really help TNA in the long run.

Stabilize Your Commercials

One thing that anybody who watches Impact frequently will tell you is that TNA often has a very bizarre schedule when it comes to showing commercials. Many times, TNA will cut to a commercial break, come back for an insanely brief period of time, and then go back right to commercials.

On last week's episode of Impact, in the middle of a gauntlet match, TNA cut to commercial. They returned right when Eric Young was entering the match. The entrances where separated in 90 second increments, but before we got our next entrant, we got another commercial break. That means that in-between commercial breaks, fans saw less than 90 seconds of Impact. If TNA is trying to gain new fans, showing a million different advertisements that take so much away from the television show is not the best way to do it.

Make PPVs Seem Special

Another bad habit for TNA is that they pull out all the stops when it comes to trying to make Impact as must-see as possible. Now, it seems strange that I would call that a bad thing, but TNA does it at the expense of its PPVs. Anyone inside wrestling business will tell you that a huge piece of the profits come from PPV money, but TNA seems to treat PPVs as if they are there to hype Impact, not the other way around.

Take Bound For Glory for example. Bound For Glory 2013 had seven matches on the main card. In the two weeks since BFG, we have seen FIVE of those matches on Impact. We saw rematches for the World Title, the Tag Team Championships, the Knockouts Title, Ethan Carter III squashing Norv and Kurt Angle vs Robert Roode. There have only been two episodes of Impact since BFG, yet almost every single significant match on that card has already had a rematch on free TV.

As a fan of TNA, I would feel kind of silly for spending money on BFG while I could have watched all the same matches on free television if I had just waited a few weeks. I understand that TNA now only has four PPVs a year, and that the rematches to further storylines have to take place on Impact if the storylines want to go anywhere, but at least extend the rematches so they all do not happen within the next two weeks. TNA could have easily gotten another month out of a AJ Styles vs Bully Ray rematch, but instead they rushed it and showed it five days after the first match took place.

Hype Up Big Matches

Speaking of AJ vs Bully, another problem TNA could easily fix is to put more time into hyping up the big matches they have on Impact. TNA wants to put the biggest matches they have on free TV, but they do not even do a good job of building up and promoting those big matches.
TNA is always looking to attract the casual fan, or the fan that does not always watch, but has a minor interest in what is going on. TNA held the big rematch between AJ and Bully on the very first impact after BFG. The only ways fans would have possibly known that the match was taking place was if they followed Dixie Carter on Twitter or actively read wrestling news on the internet.

Guess what? Casual wrestling fans don't follow Dixie Carter on Twitter, they don't scour the internet for wrestling news, that is why they are casual fans. Casual fans may tune into Impact each week for a few minutes, and that is when they might find out that a big match is going to take place. Too many times TNA announces a big match that they could have easily hyped up for weeks, but instead made it for an event only one or two days in advance.

With Bully and AJ, TNA should have announced a rematch for later, not had the whole rematch in just one episode. Hype up the match for a few weeks, make sure that everyone who would even have the slightest interest in watching the match knew about it, and THEN have the match. Instead, TNA hotshotted the match to try and pop a rating for the post-BFG Impact, even if they could have gotten a better rating if they had just shown a little bit of patience.

TNA's future and its actual financial situation is very much a mystery, and there is always going to be rumors circulating around on its demise. While we don't know how well or how bad TNA is doing right now, I do believe that making these simple changes would really help improve the company as a whole and help maximize profits.