Breaking News: ROH on Destination America

[Sardonic Artery]

Also, as DA really liked the show being built around Angle, who is that for ROH? I'd hate to see a face Adam Cole, but he could be it.

[JTCole]

Also, as DA really liked the show being built around Angle, who is that for ROH? I'd hate to see a face Adam Cole, but he could be it.

The Briscoes

[Robareid]

Destination America are only syndicating the ROH show, chances are they'll have 0 creative control.

[JTCole]

The "TNA Brigade" is out in full force today. Either it's an attack on TNA, an elaborate work or TNA has purchased ROH or anything in between.

Jesus christ, just enjoy the wrestling.

Don't you know wrestling fans can't enjoy anything nowadays?

[KL_]

[JTCole]

HHH makes that a really damn creepy pic.

[tigermask7.0]

the interesting thing is that sinclair broadcasting is located outside baltimore, maryland & destination america is located outside washington d.c. (silver spring, maryland). their headquarters are about an hour away from each other, so any issues can be discussed in person. this is (most likely) the key to how this deal went down & how it can go beyond 26 weeks.

[classic-cabana]

Remember a few days ago when the news of Impact being cancelled came out, and the big reason was that DA didn't think that wrestling was viable, despite the numbers? Turns out that was bullshit.

This feels like some Karma, as an ROH fan, in some ways. I mean, how much talent has TNA stolen over the years? Well, we stole your television deal.

There's some truth to it. DA were paying TNA for programming, and TNA live and die by those rights fees. ROH already have the programming made for SBG TV and as such dont live and die by the rights fees from DA as they would carry on as they were.

DA want wrestling but dont want to pay what they are paying TNA.

ROH being on DA is win-win for both concerned.

Why TNA didnt get some sort of exclusivity deal sums them up

[Robareid]

They likely didn't have the leverage to get that sort of clause.

[classic-cabana]

TNA will no doubt claim they are winning the 'ratings war' if they get higher viewing figures than ROH on DA, nevermind ROH is available elsewhere.

https://twitter.com/REALBobbyRoode/stat ... 9979564032

Bobby Roode, tweeting 'UNCLE!!' apparantly during the TNA/Staff conference call. Add that to the news he was backstage last Friday, going to be an interesting few weeks

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

From what we gather, DA liked the TNA programming but couldn't get the advertisers to support it because it's wrestling. That doesn't change at all, but like others have said, it's good for DA because they will be getting similar advertising but paying way less for the programming. If ROH is cheap tv for local network affiliates, it will certainly be cheap for a well backed cable channel.

Even if this doesn't directly mean higher budgets for ROH, the large increase in exposure should translate to higher revenue.

Crazy time in wrestling. Outside of WWE's main programming it's like the wild west

[supersonic]

I have not been this happy with ROH in at least seven years.

[iamloco724]

TNA will no doubt claim they are winning the 'ratings war' if they get higher viewing figures than ROH on DA, nevermind ROH is available elsewhere.

https://twitter.com/REALBobbyRoode/stat ... 9979564032

Bobby Roode, tweeting 'UNCLE!!' apparantly during the TNA/Staff conference call. Add that to the news he was backstage last Friday, going to be an interesting few weeks

He was backstage at an ROH show?

[fm20000]

Things to do:
Make the tv show 2 hours long
Set up more deep feuds/angles but no over the top INVASIONNNNNN STABLE shit anymore
Bring the American Wolves, Aries, Kenny King, and Low Ki back.
Bring in if possible MVP, Beer Money, and Kurt Angle for a run.
Try and do more foreign tapings. England, Japan, Canada, Mexico and use talents from those countries.
Try and use Bullet Club WHENVER possible and make them a staple of the company. Bullet Club vs KRD or whatever theyre called would be money
Push Silas Young
Push Roderick Strong as a face again

[The Dragon Saga]

Ok, I don't know shit about how American TV works and this doesn't change when I'll be able to watch the episodes. I just want to know if this equals more money for ROH to spend on production value and better commentators.

I just listened to Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez talk about the deal, and they say it will equal more money, how much? Don't know. It's not original programming, we need to remember that, they're airing a syndicated show days after its originally aired, DA's obvious hope is that ROH with guys like AJ Styles, The Bucks and ROH stalwarts like The Briscoes, Jay Lethal, etc, will draw as much ratings as TNA would so that they can drop TNA and then maybe replace it with ROH in September, but that's not a report, simply their assumption.

Also, as DA really liked the show being built around Angle, who is that for ROH? I'd hate to see a face Adam Cole, but he could be it.

Solely because they're on the same network now as TNA, if ROH could agree with AJ Styles to be at every TV taping, AJ Styles. Put the title on him by the end of the year. TNA would be livid.

[supersonic]

Discovery Communications and Destination America will have zero say in ROH's creative direction.

[lariat_tubman]

Discovery Communications and Destination America will have zero say in ROH's creative direction.

Oh man, that's a tough break!

[DBSommer]

Discovery Communications and Destination America will have zero say in ROH's creative direction.

ROH isn't their baby: just someone's baby they're sitting for. Luckily.

[supersonic]

Observer:

Spoiler: show

The situation with Destination America and pro wrestling took a unique turn on 5/27 with the announcement that Ring of Honor would be starting on the station on 6/3, airing at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

The Wednesday time slot would be on the same night as TNA. TNA will continue the planned airing from 9-11 p.m. While not confirmed, it is believed that TNA will retain a Friday night replay, moving to Midnight to 2 a.m.

The ROH deal has been in negotiations well before the Discovery Network sent out its memo on or around 5/11 that announced that they would be canceling TNA programming at the end of September, although the deal itself was just signed this week. However, the announcement date of 5/27 was scheduled for a few weeks, as the deal had been agreed to in principle but both sides had kept it secretive.

TNA had scheduled a conference call with talent on 5/27 to discuss the story in last week's Observer. Originally, when the story broke, TNA had said it would discuss it at the next television tapings, which were more than a month away.

Later, they sent a message to talent stating: "It has come to our attention that several internet news sources have falsely attributed statements to TNA, its executives and broadcasting partner. These false statements constitute defamation and if necessary we will seek all legal remedies available to us."

TNA was not aware of the negotiations with ROH by Destination America, nor of the contract signing until Destination America announced it on its Twitter account just hours before their talent meeting. Other sources indicated Destination America had also had talks with Jeff Jarrett in recent weeks, who seems like the odd man out.

The ROH deal with Destination America is short-term, expiring on 12/2, so for now, this is something of a experiment, The ROH show that airs in syndication in Sinclair Broadcasting stations and a few other syndicated stations around the country on weekend time slots, which will also air on Sunday nights on NESN as part of a new deal, would then air the following Wednesday night on Destination America.

The NESN deal closed at the time same, to far less publicity. The ROH syndicated that airs over the weekend will air at 8 p.m. Eastern on the regular feed of NESN (New England Sports Network), as opposed to the non-New England feed that ROH had just started airing on a few weeks ago. That deal goes into effect on 6/7.

As a sports network that carries local live sports programming, including the Boston Red Sox, the show won't air in that slot when there is a conflict. I'm not sure in those weeks if they'll give it a new slot or just not air it.

NESN is a major sports station in the Boston market, which ROH previously didn't have television in. That NESN feed is on DirecTV and Dish Network, although it's on a premium sports tier in both. NESN is available in four million homes in the New England area and five million more currently have the sports tiers between DirecTv and Dish that also carry the station.

The upside of ROH is that it would cost Destination America less money than TNA, but they would be able to, in theory, maintain the ratings that wrestling delivers. Or they could decide that the synergy for the two products will boost numbers enough to not cancel TNA as planned. As noted last week, there are a ton of moving pieces and this story is very much in progress.

Dixie Carter tried to claim the stories reported were false, and that they expected to be on Destination America in 2016, but then deflected questions about whether or not they contractually could be canceled at the end of September.

The wrestlers at the meeting were not happy because they felt overall Carter was being evasive, and also it was hard to buy the idea that she was presenting that adding ROH to Destination America was to their benefit. The keys to the talent question and answer period is that talent complained that they wanted better lines of communications.

TNA does have a multi-year deal with the Destination America, but the station has an out clause at the end of the current television season.

She also stated that all announced dates are still on the schedule and there are no changes in plans.

Two weeks ago, the Discovery Network sent out a memo stating: "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."

The DNA list is for when advertisers buy time on the station as a whole instead of just a specific show, the DNA, or Do Not Advertise list, is something sponsors list for shows they specifically don't want their ads on.

We had contacted Carter as soon as we received the information that the show was being canceled for a comment or if she knew anything different. A week later, Destination America announced, with no warning and after a month of television had been taped with references to Friday's, that the show would be moved to Wednesdays. We had also contacted Carter at that point asking if the move to Wednesdays meant a change at the Discovery Network. At the time, the people who had received the original memo had not heard of any changes in plans for TNA.

So Carter was well aware for more than one week of the issue and that a story was likely to be written and did not comment. She did not make an attempt to clarify it, or give her slant on it. But then company officials Bob Ryder and Billy Corgan played attack the messenger. At no point did the company actually address anything specific in last week's issue, but seemed trying to confuse the issue and make it like this horrible guy was spreading lies about the company.

Ryder wrote: "For almost 13 years some people have predicted we were about to go out of business. It's no more true today than it was then."

Of course, nowhere in the story did I write TNA was going out of business. I even made it clear the story was still ongoing, only that the Discovery Network was planning on canceling TNA programming.

Corgan, a rock star as the key man in the "Smashing Pumpkins" band and a long time wrestling fan, wrote, "It wouldn't be so bad if the whole truth was being reported and the person reporting wasn't being worked himself by a sloppy angle."

In other words, he was claiming there was an angle going on, which can only be presumed that TNA creative is doing a storyline where they are about to lose television, and channel the spirit of Brian Pillman. The only way this could be an angle would be to tell the Discovery Network to release a memo, tell their key management officials, and alert their advertising department, for an angle. Well, if that's the case, they should be proud that they managed to get the angle out. The response was identical to last year, when Vince Russo accidentally sent a memo that was meant for Mike Tenay, with bullet points on how to announce the show, and pushed the wrong button on his computer and it went to wrestling reporter Mike Johnson of PW Insider. Johnson then revealed that it was proof that Russo was working for TNA, which TNA had attempted to keep a secret because Spike TV, its broadcast partner, had made it clear they didn't want to have anything to do with Russo. It was right after that came out that Spike informed Carter they were not renewing at the end of their contract, but also made it clear they would keep that information quiet to allow her to have better leverage to make a new deal, and also because it doesn't serve the station well to announce so far in advance that they have a lame duck show.

Corgan claimed to have read the story, saying, "For your info, I did read your highly irresponsible piece. And as much as I love Vinny Ru, this is a different situation." The Vinny Ru comment had to do with me saying to Corgan his excuse was identical to the one Russo used when Johnson broke his story, and that Johnson was a dummy who had been easily worked by an angle.

Corgan clearly didn't read the Observer last week, most notably the part about himself, because when it was then brought up, he clammed up.

While Carter avoided mentioning my name, Corgan went off on me in specific at the conference call.

Similarly, Discovery was not planning on announcing TNA's not being renewed publicly, although the station, a week after the story broke, had still not commented on the future or publicly given TNA a vote of confidence.

ROH's syndication deal with Sinclair Network is mainly in mid-sized markets, and this gives them television exposure in both some of their key live event markets like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, but also in major markets like Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. ROH had been in talks with Spike TV about doing specials on the station but Spike, which had confirmed the talks, had told us that nothing was imminent when it came to a doing a pro wrestling deal.

With its syndicated package, Destination America and NESN, ROH will clearly be the No. 2 wrestling company in the U.S. as far as exposure goes, unless Lucha Underground clears Univision.

Joe Koff confirmed to us that the first four ROH television shows on Destination America will be from the 5/16 taping in Toronto, featuring New Japan talent. The 6/3 show will have Kushida vs. Will Ferrara, Silas Young vs. Takaaki Watanabe, Moose vs. Colby Corino and Mark & Jay Briscoe vs. Donovan Dijak & J Diesel. It's actually from a marquee standpoint, a rather weak lineup for a debut show.

However, the second show features Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian vs. Kyle O'Reilly in a handicap match for the tag titles, Jushin Liger vs. Dalton Castle and IWGP tag champs Matt Taven & Michael Bennett vs. Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows. The third hour, which will serve as the Go Home show for ROH's 6/19 PPV from New York, features the contract signing for the Jay Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal double title match, as well as a great Hiroshi Tanahashi & Liger vs. ACH & Matt Sydal bout. The 6/24 show, which will be the lead-in to TNA's go home almost live show, will be the best of the taping, with Roderick Strong vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and The Young Bucks & A.J. Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada & Rocky Romero & Baretta.

There are many different ways this story can go. If ROH proves to do equal numbers as TNA, while costing far less, that would affect a future decision. But TNA does have bigger names mainstream and better production values, plus its big edge is their show airs first on Destination America while ROH will have aired both in syndication and on NESN before it hits the station. In addition, ROH will have the disadvantage, at least through 8/5, of going head-to-head with Lucha Underground on El Rey. While that show does small numbers, the two groups are competing for an overlapping audience.

Logically, the ROH numbers should not be as good as the TNA numbers. Will the difference be large enough to where this makes TNA look good and saves them? It is also very possible that the combination of both will help the numbers for both. But, as noted in the memo, there still is the advertising issue.

ROH is planning on doing PPV shows on Friday nights from this point forward, so the go-home show that airs over the weekend, and again on Wednesday, would build do the PPV. If the show was on Sunday night, then the Wednesday show on Destination America would be hyping a show that had already taken place.

Another big question, not answered at press time, revolves around Samoa Joe and the WWE.

Those at WWE had of late said that they were not interested in any TNA talent when their contract was up (Samoa Joe was talked with and has a deal so it's a rule of sorts, but not an unbreakable one) because they didn't want talent already exposed nationally on cable. WWE has always considered that ROH talent did not fall into that category. Many wrestlers of late have opted to go to ROH instead of TNA, even at better money offers. There are a number of different reasons why, but a major one for younger talent was the feeling that going to TNA means it's very difficult to go to WWE, the ultimate goal of almost everyone. ROH, given the success of Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, Cesaro, C.M. Punk and to a lesser extent Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, was considered a route to WWE, as well as to New Japan.

Samoa Joe agreed to work for ROH for televised events and future dates when it did not have national cable clearance. The entire dynamic has now changed. And because this change was so sudden, at press time, nobody seemed to have any definitive answers.

Spoiler: show

With shoulder injuries to Sami Zayn and Hideo Itami forcing changes in the NXT Takeover Unstoppable card, WWE brought in Samoa Joe, under that name, to debut at the end of the special, on 5/20 at Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL.

Joel Seanoa, 36, was brought in on a very unique deal. It's a non-exclusive deal, very similar to that of Rhyno, with very few restrictions. He may also not be the last talent brought in with this kind of a deal, although I can't name anyone else who might get it, but it's not like a guy like Rhyno in 2015 would have been anyone's mind, and it seems to have worked out. The NXT audience will pop for an outsider, and a veteran can help teach the younger guys in the ring or add to the television show. For Joe, he can be a main eventer in NXT, and I'm sure his per date number is good. But they didn't make the big commitment financially for someone that for whatever reason, they didn't offer a full-time deal with right now. Seanoa shot a staredown angle with Kevin Owens, and then worked television that night, building for a match that is expected to air on the 6/17 NXT broadcast. The staredown ended in a pull-apart, to keep the story going.

The deal included a Samoa Joe T-Shirt, which sold out of its initial stock immediately. He gets to keep the name, since he's not appearing on WWE TV right now, and the contract is for limited NXT dates, meaning he can continue to work independently. Seanoa had originally given word he couldn't take any indie dates after April, a timetable that had continued to be pushed back, which figured that his WWE debut was delayed. He was now taking dates through August. The new deal allowed him to work just about anywhere he wants. Originally, he was looking at starting later in the year with ROH, like September, when the nature of the unique deal allowed him to still work ROH and he started looking at getting new dates going forward. But that's been moved up as he's starting back at the 6/20 TV tapings in New York. We're told he's had talks and even recently spent time with the people from New Japan. He also could get offered a full-time WWE deal.

Right now the word in wrestling is that he can't commit to anything full-time from another group for the short-term window. WWE could sign him full-time at any point, which would end his working for other groups, and right now, WWE has first priority on his dates. Even though one person described it as the Rhyno deal, except for more money, this is a first unique WWE deal because it's been years since they would take someone and push him (granted, at this point only on their network, not their regular TV), using the person's old and established old ring name but also allow him to work almost anywhere. It's a test case and if it works out well, others that are good wrestlers that they may not right now be thinking main roster for, could be offered similar deals for NXT because the NXT buzz depends far more on big personalities and great matches. Right now it's cool, but it also really doesn't have much depth, as even the big special they did only had two matches the slightest bit out of the ordinary.

While we have not been told the deal excludes TNA, in another deal that was similar, the person talked with was told he could wrestle anywhere except for TNA. There was little chance right now that Seanoa was going to return to TNA, anyway.

[plyboult]

Things to do:
Make the tv show 2 hours long
Set up more deep feuds/angles but no over the top INVASIONNNNNN STABLE shit anymore
Bring the American Wolves, Aries, Kenny King, and Low Ki back.
Bring in if possible MVP, Beer Money, and Kurt Angle for a run.
Try and do more foreign tapings. England, Japan, Canada, Mexico and use talents from those countries.
Try and use Bullet Club WHENVER possible and make them a staple of the company. Bullet Club vs KRD or whatever theyre called would be money
Push Silas Young
Push Roderick Strong as a face again

Think they have to take it a lot slower than that, I would just like to see them continue with their build of shows and to maybe add a couple former guys (like Aries especially)..

I totally love what ROH is doing, i don't have many complaints at all... it's just such a fresh product to me, the deal with DA is kinda crazy, but thinking back TNA may just have been a trial run to see what wrestling could do for the network.. so for several months they talk with ROH and now there's a deal. This is big for them.