7 Ways TNA Resembles A Dying WCW

7. Filming Back To Back Episodes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGMHlqdGDQ When I was in middle school, I went to my first live wrestling show. It was an episode of WCW's flagship show Monday Nitro. It was just over two months before the company went out of business. The arena was about half-full, but it was still a blast. After Nitro ended, we were told to stick around for a special taping of Thunder, which was their Wednesday night TV show. The announcer may have just as well have yelled "fire!" as thousands of people in the building quickly fled. Hey, two and a half hours of wrestling (with the pre-show) is great, but another two hours is just overkill. WWE struggles to keep fans entertained for their marathon RAW tapings, and TNA asks their audience to stick around for back-to-back Impact episodes which run even longer. From a cost cutting standpoint, it makes sense. You don't have to fly all the talent in twice. You don't have to set up the stage twice. All in all, it's just easier. But easy doesn't make for excitement when the crowd is clearly burnt out. You're also asking everyone in the audience to suspend their disbelief and pretend that what they just saw actually happened a week ago. This is not a trait of WCW that TNA probably wanted to emulate. For the most part, TNA is back to a single location at the Impact Zone for their tapings. The company started out this way for years before trying to expand and travel across the country. Lack of tickets sold for those events quickly put an end to that experiment. Before WCW went out of business, Eric Bischoff was attempting to buy the company with the financial backing of Fusient Media Ventures. Due to a variety of reasons that fell through. But had it worked, part of Bischof's plan to help WCW stop hemorrhaging money was to take the company to a single location in Las Vegas. Sound familiar?