Dixie Carter provides more information about Impact Wrestling's new 'reality' focus

There's lots of news and speculation concerning the new Impact Wrestling, and the first episode hasn't even aired yet.

Some of that is because of TNA's history.  Wrestling fans are as likely as anyone to rubberneck an accident site, and as loathe as some in the anti-WWE crowd are to admit it, Impact has earned it's LOL meme on more than one occasion.

There are other segments of fandom that are desperate for an alternative, fans of workers currently contracted to Dixie Carter and/or who just love pro wrestling in all its forms that are excited about getting one of their weekly options back.

Everyone is getting some pieces of the puzzles from Carter's press tour in advance of tonight's 9PM Eastern/6PM Pacific premiere on new home Destination America tonight.  Earlier this week, we brought you news of TNA's plans for pay-per-view (PPV) and this morning there was a report on the 'reality' television aspects coming to Impact with the move to a new channel.

Dixie expanded on both in her talk with Brian Fritz for The Sporting News.  The interview posted earlier today talks about the process that lead TNA to their new Discovery Communications-owned U.S. broadcast partner, and what to expect from Impact Wrestling moving forward.

We're also going to be looking at making some changes to the show in 2015. When you tune in Wednesday night, it's going to be a great live wrestling show. There's going to be some exciting surprises that happen on it but there will also be some amazing matches. But as you start to watch the shows through the year you'll see the changes that we'll be working on. A lot of those will be pulling the curtain back a little more then we have in the past and seeing cameras in different positions and production is going to be shot differently and we're going to be trying some new things with the announcers. So, we're really trying to look at the product with fresh eyes focusing very much on what we do best, the in-ring product like we did this past summer but at the same time working on really making the show have a much, much different feel.

While it does sound like those changes will be featured in the Saturday morning replays of Impact that Destination America will be doing, and the Unlocked show that Mike Tenay will be hosting on Saturday nights.

The great thing about the replay is we're going to try and make it a much different show, a kind of director's cut, a little bit like MTV, you know, with the popups they used to have on the show. It's going to be really interesting. There's going to be facts and commentary and interviews. Just a lot of things that we don't have an opportunity to do in the main show so, hopefully, some people may want to watch it twice, some people will find us that way and hopefully turn into the premiere episode. I'm excited - the show is called "Unlocked" because that's what we're going to do. We're really going to be unlocking a lot of things that people want to know. Wrestling has become so much that, they're more interested in what people, who they really are and what happens at their homes, is this contract negotiation going on and is there real trouble backstage with this person and is this person really pregnant. We're going to give a lot of that information and I think that's where the wrestling fan's going.

Carter is banking on wrestling fans wanting the behind-the-scenes information more than wanting a live broadcast (or at least that's how she's spinning it):

I think that where we want to go from a production and a feel standpoint from the show does not work going live. It does not allow us to do the kind of things that we're going to want to do because there's just a lot of post-production time involved in it. So, we'll have to see. We can always go live and it can be a show like it will be this Wednesday and it's going to great action and lots of surprises and just be an amazing show that you're not going to want to miss but I think where we're going to try to take the show is definitely going to take post-production time and we're not going to be able to pull off all the bells and whistles we want if we try to go live.

It will be interesting to see how those "bells and whistles" interact with the wrestling product.  To Dixie's credit, she spends time talking about that product, and how proud she is of the company's shift in focus to younger talent and the success she feels they've had in a short amount of time with stars like Ethan Carter III, Spud, Magnus and Bram.  Keeping wrestling fans happy with fresh faces in great matches while also incorporating the 'reality' elements that Carter is a fan of, and that they're pitching as a common theme with their Destination America's current slate of shows like BBQ Pitmaster and Living Alaska, will be a challenge.

We'll start finding out how well they handle that challenge tonight.

Check out Fritz's article for more information and background on the move to Destination America and how their partnership will benefit TNA.