Monday, January 4th Ratings Don’t Matter
Across the internet, fans are gearing up for the “New Monday Night Wars”—January 4th, when Total Nonstop Action brings Impact to Monday night for a week, with a special 3-hour episode featuring the debut of Hulk Hogan. On the same night, WWE plans to bring Bret Hart back to TV, 12 years after the “Montreal Screwjob.”
Fans are interested in both company’s efforts and some are predicting solid ratings for both shows, with fans returning to see what’s going on, and word of mouth buzz spreading. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter who turns in that Monday night: it matters who will enjoy the show enough to turn in the Monday after … but only WWE is airing a show on the 11th. TNA is doing the 4th as a special feature, an experiment, and their next new television show is not until a full ten days later, Thursday the 14th.
Even if TNA Impact on the 4th does well and they decide to move to Monday nights regularly [there are rumours that they will do a show on Mondays once a quarter], they won’t be able to promote that on the 4th, which is the exact time when it needs to be promoted. So they’ll be forced to promote the Thursday the 14th show—will the 4th do well enough for people to tune in 10 days later on a different night of the week, or at least enough for them to immediately set their DVR to record it?
No matter how well TNA does on the 4th—there is now way it is beating WWE—the winner of the ratings on the 11th will be RAW.
And that’s the problem with TNA: hot-shotting and one night specials can get attention, but they don’t build a larger viewership in the same way that consistency does. If there’s one thing that TNA has proved, it’s a complete lack of consistency: a show that flip-flops from serious to comedic; quality matches followed by completely lousy ones; pushes and storylines that stop in the middle or are pushed to their conclusion too fast; and ad nauseum, the complaints continue and TNA shows no signs of changing.
Could Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff coming to TNA signal a change in the way they handle things? It’s possible. But even if the 4th is a huge success for TNA, there’s going to be another downwards dip after it while TNA finds their footing and gets up and running under the new regime.