More News On TNA Wrestling Cancelled By Destination America

By John Canton / May 28, 2015

It was reported last week that Destination America was going to cancel TNA Wrestling in September because they have an out clause in their two year contract. The story is that TNA is expensive to produce, doesn't produce ratings that are significant enough to justify the costs and advertisers don't want to promote on wrestling shows. This story was covered in great detail by the Wrestling Observer last week and after it came out, TNA offered up a weak statement denying it. In this week's Observer, Dave Meltzer offered up some more details while also adding that he tried to contact TNA President Dixie Carter days before he was going to share the story. She refused to comment even though he gave her plenty of opportunity to do so. Here's part of the memo that was sent to Destination America employees two weeks ago;

"Destination America is not renewing TNA Wrestling next year. While the ratings were strong, the audience was not large enough to justify the program investment. We plan to honor the current contract and continue to air original episodes of TNA Wrestling on Friday nights through the end of the third quarter 2015. When the up-front rate card is released, the Friday night anthology title will now be called 'American Tales,' which will be a combination of Paranormal and Americana programming. I hope this is good news given all of the advertisers that included TNA on their DNA list."

It says it right in the opening line that they are not renewing TNA. The part about Friday night is noteworthy because it was written prior to TNA announced the move to Wednesdays, which starts next week on June 3. Meltzer has noted that between now and September, there's a chance that Destination America may change their minds although the last sentence there is pretty telling because it specifically mentions advertisers putting TNA on their "do not advertise" list. If this report wasn't true then why is Destination America so quiet about it? In the talent meeting that TNA had, apparently they said that they aren't going to comment on things like that. Now that the actual memo is produced for the public to read, it will be difficult to deny it. TNA wrestlers apparently had no idea about the cancellation until it appeared in the Observer last week. Their boss Dixie knew, but she chose to not tell them and they had to find out on the internet just like the fans. It's that kind of poor talent management that has led to the downfall of TNA and it could lead to the death of the promotion as well. As for Carter, apparently she's pitching a reality TV show as well. This is a company that took three months to play production employees earlier this year and clearly are having other issues, yet she's trying to get a TV show for herself? It's very irresponsible on her part. No wonder people in the company are so upset about things because the future is very much in doubt.