Pursuit Channel isn’t that into Impact

On Friday, Impact Wrestling announced they’re moving their weekly U.S. television home from Pop TV to Pursuit Channel in a few weeks.

After we all made the usual zombie and cockroach jokes about the former TNA, folks started to realize there was a reason why the Anthem Entertainment-owned promotion dumped this news on the last day before a long holiday weekend. Not only was the move to a network with fewer viewers in a worse time slot, but Anthem also has a significant stake in Pursuit. That means that there were so few takers, despite rumors of interest from the likes of TruTV and WGN, that they put Impact on another of their own networks.

Still, you’d expect a channel at least partially owned by the same company to act excited about the acquisition. Until PWInsider pointed it out on Sunday, the network hadn’t acknowledged the news anywhere online. Since then, they did get around to sharing a video from Impact’s Facebook page and retweeting something from Sami Callihan’s Twitter account. But still, it’s been decidedly low key for the move of a show which might give Pursuit its best chance to land in the Nielson ratings report.

To be fair, it is Christmas, and Pursuit’s founder and CEO did offer an enthusiastic-sounding quote in the official press release. And it’s not like the channel is terribly active in promoting anything - they haven’t tweeted since Nov. 30.

The responses to their initial promotion are telling. The Callihan retweet is mostly wrestling fans lamenting that they don’t get Pursuit; the Facebook share has fans of the outdoors network mocking wrestling.

Maybe it’s for the best that their new home isn’t that into them. They’ve earned their zombie/cockroach cred, but if they’re gonna keep shambling around, it might be best for Impact if Pursuit is just a temporary stop.