Industry experts & JR react to Impact on Pop debut

PWTorch spoke with TV industry experts who watched TNA Impact’s debut show Tuesday night on Pop TV. Here is their perspective on the show.

– The show felt similar to the product on Destination America, down to the commercial breaks, which gives an idea of how difficult it is to sell wrestling that is not WWE.

– In a typical two hours on cable, there is roughly 24 minutes of national commercial time and about four minutes of local time.  Excluding the five-minute promo for “Schitt’s Creek” that was likely carved out from show time, but perhaps added back via over-run, the show had roughly 17 minutes of commercial time. Most of it were local ads, cross-promo ads for shows on other channels, movie on-demand spots, and insurance ads.  The only national sponsors were as you expect – food products from Pepsi, Olive Garden, Domino’s, and Little Caesars.

Given the current TV environment, this will be a very challenging situation for Pop and Impact getting ad support. Plus, the rest of their programming skews female with soap operas and the like. An advertisement for Impact airing during “Days of Our Lives” would likely not resonate.

– From a production standpoint, the show looked good, although the music they used was too subdued.

– The curious thing was TNA advertising Angelina Love to wrestle knowing that she was pregnant. Also, why the risqué shot of Taryn Terrell in the video open when she left TNA because of that reason?

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– Former WWE announcer Jim Ross also published his thoughts on the first Impact airing in a new blog at jrsbarbq.com.

Ross’s Pros:

• TNA talent worked hard.
• There were mainly clean finishes.
• The main event was not interrupted by a commercial break.
• TNA added to the roster by introducing Mike Bennett & Maria.
• Beer Money was put back together.

Ross’s Cons:

• Impact featured “too much long form talk for my taste.” The TNA roster is  best suited to wrestle and not engage in multiple, long-form promos.
• Wrestlers kicked out of established finishers too much.
• The in-ring presentation was “not off the page,” but was generally solid.