Dixie Carter Tells TNA Wrestlers To Ignore Viewership Numbers

TNA Wrestling is at a point in their history where there's reason to worry. Their deal with Spike TV ended last year after being there for about a decade and then they moved to Destination America this year as their home on American television. When that move was announced the response by most people was "what's Destination America?" because it's a fairly new channel that wasn't popular. TNA claimed the deal was great because they were going to put all of this other TNA content on there, but they have already backed away from showing more TNA content. It's basically just Impact on Friday nights while other TNA shows are hard to find. The subject of television viewership numbers has been a cause for concern for TNA as well. A few years ago they were averaging 1.3 million viewers on Spike TV a lot of the time. Now it's about 500,000 people. That's a significant drop. According to PWInsider, TNA President Dixie Carter had a meeting with talent during their tapings this past weekend to address the issue. According to the report, Carter told the performers not to believe what they read on wrestling websites about the ratings and viewership being down. She claimed that when websites publish TNA ratings data, they publish the data that comes from Nielsen and she claims they don't post the West coast numbers even though most sites post the total number including the replay. She also mentioned that they don't report on the DVR numbers that are representative of when people watch later in the week. That's true of any TV show. DVR numbers are separate. Dixie reportedly assured the roster that the numbers are better than what is out there. What's funny about this news is that when Dixie was on Steve Austin's podcast she legitimately said she wished she could put a lie detector on people to find out who leaks information. Then somebody leaked this information out. Sorry Dixie. Wrestlers and people in the business talk. It's how it has always been. The reality is TNA's numbers are down from when they were on Spike TV and it's a significant number, but it's no surprise that Carter would try to put a positive spin on things. Morale in TNA can't be that good since they recently had to cancel a planned tour of China after they told wrestlers that they were going. There were also stories of people not being paid for months at a time. Maybe most of the wrestlers got paid on time, but apparently production people did not. That's a very bad sign. In terms of the quality of their product, TNA's shows are pretty good. They have a nice mix of talent with a lot of former WWE stars in key spots like Kurt Angle as the veteran World Champion and also a mix of newer talent, so they are doing better in terms of the show. It's just difficult to get viewership numbers up when you're on a smaller network like Destination America. If you get that channel or live in another country, you should give them another chance. It's a better show than it has been in the last few years.