With TNA still reeling from Dave Meltzer's bombshell report that Destination America plans to cancel Impact at the end of September, many are wondering what can keep the zombie wrestling promotion alive past the autumn.
Although TNA Impact is moving to Wednesday nights tomorrow and have been given the perfect lead-in of Ring Of Honor's television show, which should boost Impact's first-run viewership somewhat, it's unlikely to make a significant enough difference in their ratings to make the executives at Destination America change their minds. That's because far too many of the network's advertisers have included TNA on their DNA (Do Not Advertise) list, which isn't going to change overnight and makes it hard for Destination America to justify their financial investment into TNA programming.
TNA could always find a new domestic television deal, but that also looks like it will be an uphill struggle, after being cancelled twice in twelve months. Even if they manage to do so, it will almost certainly be on an even lower profile station for even less money, because they have no negotiating leverage whatsoever.
So TNA needs a plan C, an idea that can convince their gullible owner Dixie Carter to continue pouring bad money after good into the company, even if they can't find a new home for Impact. According to Dave Meltzer in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, TNA have already come up with such a fallback strategy, which is taping a reality television show where the lead star is none other than Dixie Carter:
"At the last set of tapings, they were filming for a pilot episode of a Dixie Carter reality show, filming where she gave a speech to the talent and introduced Billy Corgan.... There is a feeling that even if worst comes to worst as far as not getting a new U.S. TV deal goes, that there is incentive to keep TNA alive as long as the Carter reality show deal is still on the table, because the hook is a woman that runs a company in the male dominated pro wrestling industry."
Ironically, this concept is remarkably similar to Vince Russo's idea of a comedy sitcom called Belle of the Brawl about a fictional wrestling company owned and operated by a woman, except I guess this project won't be played for intentional laughs and has slightly better odds of ever coming to fruition.
Given that reality shows aren't cheap to produce, taping a pilot seems like a waste of time, energy and money without a concrete offer from a network to air the episode and pick it up as a series if it's successful. Many wrestling stars with much bigger names than Dixie Carter (like Ric Flair, Kurt Angle and even Billy Corgan's Resistance Pro Wrestling) have attempted to get reality shows about their lives off the ground, but have been unsuccessful. It's hard to believe Dixie would have much better luck than those names if TNA can't find a place to air Impact in the USA, which should after all be her focus.
To put it bluntly, this comes off as a rather desperate con by the shady people in her ear, who want to suck on Panda Energy's teat until the milk runs dry, before attempting to inveigle their way into another job in the business, as these people have no real loyalty to the Carter family.
A perfect exhibit of the art of the wrestling con game was provided by wrestling journalist David Bixenspan (who despite rumours to the contrary has never moonlighted as a WWE announcer) on Twitter last week. David posted the following screencap of an email sent by Vince Russo to Dixie Carter shortly after Russo was rehired as a writer on TNA's creative team in Sept. 2006 where he criticised Jim Cornette as too Southern and unhip for a TV authority figure (a strategy he had successfully used to bury Corny as an onscreen character to Vince McMahon in the late 1990s), whilst suggesting what would be cool would be for an "attractive, sexy, female" replacement (hey, I wonder who could fill that role?):
The email is a Machiavellian masterpiece: note how the criticism doesn't come from Vince directly, but from a friend of his who just happens to see things his way, how he swears he has no personal beef with Cornette and is just acting in his professional capacity for the good of the company, and how he doesn't outright say Dixie should be on television, just plants the idea in her head that it might be a smart idea.
It thus looks like some of the people who replaced Russo in power in TNA are using his old tricks to keep themselves gainfully employed.
For those wondering why this email is public record, it was found via discovery during Konnan's racial discrimination lawsuit against TNA, along with other amusing correspondence like Dixie Carter telling then Head of Talent Relations Terry Taylor: "Are you aware of this? This is bullshit." in response to an Alex Marvez story that claimed that TNA had backed out of helping Konnan to pay for his kidney transplant operation.