TNA 5 Spot: 5 Things TNA Can Do to Compete with WWE

Welcome to the TNA 5 Spot, a new series of articles I will be sharing with you here at Bleacher Report.

In this, the third article in the series, I will take a look at what I think TNA needs to focus on in order not only improve but to compete with the WWE.

Allow me to clarify my use of the term "compete".

TNA will never knock WWE off the mountain as they are too well establish and funded and have a strangle hold on the industry which is fueled by a marketing machine that TNA will never be able to compete with.

However, TNA can certainly improve enough to make in-roads stealing some thunder and even viewers from the WWE juggernaut by simply learning from their successful business model.

TNA has been making strides over the last year and they have improved their on-air product tremendously.

That being said, they are still looked upon as a glorified Indy promotion that somehow made their way onto broadcast TV.

Here are the top 5 things that I believe TNA needs to focus on in order to progress forward in the years to come.

Enjoy.

#5 Roster Management

TNA has 49 active wrestlers on their roster yet they use slightly more than 50 % of their talent pool week in and week out.

That's a lot of dead weight with a lot of money attached to it.

The reasons for the misuse of their roster range from a lack of air-time to give proper exposure; a poor training program; and a lack of all-around talent of those available to choose from.

TNA has done a very good job of establishing their top-level talent by pushing TNA originals like Booby Roode and James Storm, but they also have a penchant for mishandling other great talent such as Samoa Joe, A.J. Styles and Pope.

TNA is a perfect example of the famous saying "One step forward, two steps back".

They are in fact their own worst enemy and have many holes in their feet from shooting themselves there. Their vision, when it comes to roster management, is very short-sighted.

In addition, TNA has made some really puzzling choices when it comes to talent retention. In the last year alone they have allowed such talents as Jay Lethal, Amazing Red and Generation Me to walk without a means to replace them with equal or better talent.

It is for these reasons that I have chosen "Roster Management" as one of five areas that TNA needs to pay particular and immediate attention to.

A good start to addressing roster improvements has already been established. Recently, TNA announced that is came to terms with Ohio Valley Wrestling promotion (OVW) to work together using OVW as a development territory for TNA. 

Think if OVW as the TNA's minor leagues.

Their trainers are some of the best in the business and OVW is often referred to as the "Harvard of Wrestling".

One cannot argue with their success. OVW has developed the liked of Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Shelton Benjamin and Randy Orton over the years.

Regardless of whatever future talent TNA might harvest from the OVW, they would do wise to take another look at their current roster and correct some mistakes they cannot afford to continue to make.

TNA would be wise to release current dead weight such as Anarquia, Hernandez, Robbie E and Rob Terry and replace them with those they should have never let go.

Guys like Jay Lethal, Amazing Red and Generation Me. 

Lastly, TNA should fork over the money to sign John Morrison, the former WWE superstar.

If for some reason they feel they cannot afford to do that I am here to remind them of the continued waste of money they dish out to the likes of So-Cal Val, Christy Hemme, Hernandez, Ken Anderson (who is paid to be a star when he is at best an upper mid-card player), Anarquia, Eric Bischoff, Rob Terry, Robbie E and others whose continued presence has done little to improve TNA.

Can you imagine the electricity that TNA would generate with a promotion featuring a feud between the likes of Austin Aries and John Morrison?

TNA has the money to sign such a star. They simply have invested it poorly.

Roster improvements- a necessary area for TNA to address of they are serious about moving forward.

#4 Social Media

John Cena and The Rock have been mostly built up via Social Media

TNA has a contract with Spike TV to air a two-hour, pre-taped show every Thursday from the confines of a sound studio in Orlando, Florida.

It's tired, stale and has the feel of a glorified, local Indy promotion. The TNA Impact audience is usually filled with tourists instead of fans that would not recognize a wrist-lock from a wrist watch.

TNA'S weekly ratings are one third of that which the WWE pulls in every week.

TNA needs to establish a bigger fan base in order to become more main stream and Social Media is the way to go.

In order to do that TNA should make it a contract staple that all their wrestlers have an active Twitter account as well as well as asking some of their more charismatic talents to have an active You Tube presence.

The WWE is often one of of the leading trends on Twitter and the Rock, John Cena and CM Punk have huge, loyal followings that they correspond with regularly. This gives the fans a sense of a relationship with these particular talents and thus their loyalty manifests itself into ratings points.

Chris Jericho may be the focus of one of the most over rated and over hyped returns in recent years, in fact it is a bust, but it was driven in large part to his interaction with his fans, and his detractors, via Twitter.

He actually trolled his audience on Twitter AND Live on Raw proving the power of Social Media.

Zack Ryder, a wrestler that would have gone no where fifteen years ago, has built his entire character and fan base by an excellent use of You Tube. His You Tube channel is so popular that the WWE now funds it for him.

Eric Young, TNA's resident, highly over-the-top goof ball, would be a perfect person to utilize the Zack Ryder approach.

The power of the proper use of Social Media within the WWE is also evident with the impending meeting coming this April at Wrestlemania 28 between The Rock and John Cena.

The Rock has commitments that can keep him from making regular appearances on WWE programming but the feud is hot because of his involvement with Twitter and Cena's as well. 

It's genius and it works.

TNA's Social Media presence is weak, almost non-existent. 

Their website does not engage and invite interaction.

On Impact, a taped show, they frequently pop-up a question for fans to tweet a response but since it is a pre-taped show, the effect is reduced to nothing short of a waste of time.

It's actually laughable because while they ask for fans to tweet a response, it's a taped show and thus they cannot revisit it like the WWE does when broadcast live.

If they are not going to spend the money to sign a talent like John Morrison, then they should cut all the dead weight I mentioned on the previous slide and invest that money into a serious Social Media presence.

It's worth it.

Much of the WWE's current success can be traced to their collective and effective use of Social Media.

This is not your grandpa's wrestling anymore. We are in an age of rapid information and response at one's finger tips. Attention Deficit Order is the new norm with wrestling fans so TNA needs to learn how to use the tools that are out there in order to effectively attract and communicate with those that want and need to reach.

Social Media- a mush needed investment for TNA to delve into.

#3 More Programming

What a waste of money...retool this and put it on TV.

The WWE has two main stream shows in Smackdown and Raw. They also have a reality type show and a new network on the way.

In other words, they are saturated and in our face soon to be 24 hour a day, 7 days a week.

TNA?

If you blink you'll miss it.

TNA is a once-a-week, two-hour, pre-taped show with results available online for anyone that cares to read.

It's not exactly "must-see T.V."

As mentioned previously in the first slide, TNA has 49 wrestlers to use and almost half of them hardly see the light of day. One of the reasons, as I mentioned in that slide, is a lack of air-time available.

A way to alleviate this problem would be to add another hour to TNA programming each week. However, three hours of wrestling in one sitting is a bit much if you ask me.

A better idea would be to create another weekly, one-hour show that focuses on on the T.V Title, mid-card talents and the X-Division.

Any easy way to do this would be to tape the house shows, package them as a new one-hour weekly format and offer it up to Spike for airing on a Saturday instead of the infomercials they currently air.

These house shows often feature the guys that are currently on the roster that never make their way onto Impact.

They could also simply just create a new format for a weekly one-hour show. Four to five matches of high flying action would be a ratings winner and an easier way for TNA to keep their promise, which they continually fail to do, of focusing on the X-Division without having to worry about how to fit it on on Impact.

Who knows how big a wrestler like Anthony Nese or Jesse Sorenson could become? One thing is certain- no one will ever know if TNA continues as they are now.

It would also be a great vehicle for the T.V title to be defended. It's absurd to me that a "T.V."title is never defended on "T.V".

Do you know what TNA Explosion is?

I did not either it but I kept hearing about it so I looked it up. It's a weekly show for international markets as well as airing on the Internet and one that highlights things that happened on Impact as well as featuring a few matches specifically taped for Explosion itself.

Are you kidding me?  I have been watching TNA for three years and I have never heard of Explosion.

Why waste the time, money and investment on something no one knows about?

TNA wastes all that money producing this show when they have not effectively captured a domestic market here in the states? 

Unbelievable. 

TNA should retool the Explosion concept and once again air it here in the States, on television, as well as abroad in order to maximize their exposure.

There is the one-hour show they need right there, ready to go with the money and time already invested.

In addition, TNA could easily use the OVW and and some of their current talents to have a "Tough Enough" type reality show of their own to attract new talent and expand the TNA brand to a new audience.

It seems to me that TNA lacks a long term vision when it comes to promoting their product.

More programming- a necessary component for TNA to grow.

#2 Hit the Road, Jack

This North Carolina road show crowd is 10 times the size of the studio capacity TNA usually tapes in front of.

Have you ever watched a TNA taping from when the show was on the road as opposed to one taped from the confines of the studio in Orlando?

If not, pay particular attention to this week's Impact which was taped live from their UK Tour.

The difference is incredible.

Back in the day, long before the WWE became the wrestling giant it has become, wrestling promotions were based on territories.

They were small groups around the country playing in local armories and fire halls. It's how they grew.

As the WWE grew, they bought out these territories and their talents were featured on 'house shows" across the county.

Instead of someone like Hulk Hogan being a big deal in the Florida territory, he became a country-wide, and then world-wide, sensation.

It happens on the road. That is how you build a giant.

Everything that I have laid out thus far in this slide show, the roster issues, the exposure issues, the social media issues can all be traced to the fact that TNA does not go out on the road.

Road trips are essential.

It's why singer's go on tour. 

It's why Baseball has road games.

The WWE is a mega revenue giant and everything and I mean everything they do is on the road. 

More exposure equals more revenue.

When the masses won't come to you, you go to the masses.

There is a rumor out there that the regular IMPACT audience gets in for free. 

That's bad business.

TNA kills itself by taping a weekly show that is anchored to an Orlando Studio that can hold no more that 750 people.

Word came a few months ago that TNA made some outside hires, one of which was a marketing guru that informed us that TNA would be going on the road more.

So far, nearly every Impact since then has been taped in Orlando.

Dixie Carter has been quoted as saying that going on the road is too expensive. She lacks the forward vision and knowledge of this business to know that staying in one place is costing TNA far more than they would ever spend by hitting the road.

If Impact needs to be taped, which is it's biggest problem, it needs to be done from a different venue on the road every week in order to give it some juice.

Anything less is a recipe for continued failure. TNA is cheap and it shows every time they tape from Orlando in front of a bunch of dead tourists that don't know a suplex from a sandwich.

It's time to change the way TNA thinks.

Hitting the Road- yet another crucial step for TNA to not only improve, but to survive.

#1 TNA Must Go Live on Thursday Nights

The biggest thing the WWE has going for them on Raw is the unknown.

We may know who will be on the card, we may think we know what might happen, but until we tune in we will never know because they broadcast live.

Anything, they say, can happen when you go live.

The Undertaker can show up unexpected and unannounced as he did this past week.

A wrestler can quit on live TV as we have see than before.

We might be told a major player is making a return, but without knowing for sure we are going to tune in because it's live.

We recently witnessed this with the return of Chris Jericho. His return sucked, and still does despite what some arrogant smarks out there would have you believe, but not knowing if it would really be him, who might show up with him or what he would do made us all tune in.

That's the point and that's the power of live T.V.

Yes, TNA did make an attempt two years ago by trying to go live  but they did just about everything a promotion can do wrong and did it for all the wrong reasons.

They switched from Thursday to Monday straying from their loyal audience.

They did not lay the necessary ground work prior to their live launch, rushing in where fools should dare not tread.

They did not build any established stars of feuds that were know to many outside the loyal TNA audience giving no one a reason to switch channels from Raw to Impact.

They made the move mostly based on the misguided assumption that Hulk Hogan was not only bigger than the WWE but bigger than the industry itself.

It was 2009 not 1988.

Today, TNA is better suited to go live but to do so on the same night they currently air Impact.

Thursday.

TNA has established new stars, focused on fresh talent instead of trying to catch lightning in a bottle with older stars long past their prime, and they have established the importance of titles, some of them anyway, by giving their title holders longer reigns thus building anticipation, a key component when trying to build an audience.

However, what kills all that effort, in addition to poor marketing, not hitting the road, a weak roster and a lack of a solid social media presence is the fact that they continue to tape Impact in front if a dead, non-invested crowd from the same venue every week.

The results of each Impact are available online prior to the actual air date complete with biased reviews that do have an effect on those of us that wonder if we should tune in or not.

TNA reviews online are mostly negative because they are unfairly compared to WWE programming. That's like saying that Hulk Hogan is the greatest wrestler of all time, when in fact he is the greatest marketing attraction of all time.

It's apples and oranges.

It's unfair to compare TNA to the WWE, but that does not mean TNA cannot emulate some of the established successes that the WWE employs in an effort make such a comparison more reasonable.

WWE is a powerhouse because they have a deep roster that gets exposure from more than one show, they use social media better than anyone else, they go on the road to gain their fan base and they broadcast their flagship show, Raw, live forcing us to tune in because we have no idea what will happen.

TNA will never push the WWE off the mountain, but they can find their own peak to rest upon by learning from what WWE does well.

TNA has two things the WWE does not have; the X-Division and a better, more involved female talent contingent on the roster.

By following the WWE model, as laid out in this slideshow, TNA would establish their own niche based on those two elements alone, supported by good writing and good talent and would become a more viable,competitive and more profitable company.

By doing what I have outlined here and going live on Thursday, TNA could easily hit the 2.25 ratings mark which would significantly establish them as a threat instead of the glorified, Indy wannabe they appear to be now.

TNA won't over take the WWE, no matter what they do, but that should not stop them from becoming the best they can be.

I believe the steps I have laid out here in this TNA 5 Spot slideshow would allow them to do just that.

 

Don't forget to check out my weekly TNA Impact review right here at Bleacher Report every Friday.

 

I hope you enjoyed this TNA 5 Spot. If you missed the others, I provided the links to them below.

TNA 5 Spot: Top 5 Mic Skills in TNA Right Now

TNA 5 Spot: Top 5 Underutilized Wrestlers on the TNA Roster Right Now

If you like, check out my other recent columns as well

TNA Wrestling: Bobby Roode to Lose His Title, Who, What, When, Where, Why, How?

WWE: So, How's Jericho's 'Genius, Epic" Return Looking Now, Smarks?

 

As always, thanks for the support you continually show by reading and commenting on my columns.

Your thoughts? The floor is open.