Breaking News: ROH on Destination America

[Burnside]

The 8th pm slot is just a minor setback, or as Burnside pointed out, even a possible upside. Since this means ROH does not compete with both LU and NXT. Besides, ROH doesn't have the same pressure for ratings as say TNA does since it is not an in house production

Well, I'd call it more than a minor setback. Being dropped from the prime time slot is a bad sign in terms of the show's future on DA after the trial period ends in December - that is just a fact. It's not like DA even has anything in particular to replace it with - it's more that the ROH show failed in that spot. I am hopeful, however, that maybe not running head to head with NXT and LU, and having just the one airing, will boost ratings enough that DA will renew the show in the late-night spot.

On the other hand, Monster Mafia raises a good point. Are there any signs that being on DA is actually helping ROH? Maybe it's too soon to say, but so far it doesn't look like the increased visibility has resulted in increased attendance or increased PPV or iPPV buys. And Meltzer says DA isn't paying ROH anything to air the show, so no revenue there. Right now the negatives of getting on WWE's shitlist seem to be hurting ROH more than being on DA is helping them.

Honestly, putting ROH on in a block with TNA was a good move, but everything else about the placement and promotion by DA was bad. 8pm Wednesday up against NXT and Lucha Underground was bad. Not promoting the show at all was bad. If I was DA, I would have launched the show in that 11pm slot after TNA and then watched to see if the ratings warranted a prime time move.

And for ROH's part, as I mentioned at the time, starting the run with a weak first episode was really bad. I firmly believe the first impression is so important, and the first match on the first episode of DA needed to be that AJ/Bucks vs Kushida/RPG Vice match and then a hot Briscoe promo. Instead the first wrestler we saw was Will Ferrara, and we got an episode full of matches with Colby Corino and J. Diesel. You can never get that first impression back.

[Thelone]

I don't think a lot of people are watching NXT live on the Network unless it's a Takeover, and I also don't think LU and ROH have the same audience at all.

[Burnside]

I don't think a lot of people are watching NXT live on the Network unless it's a Takeover, and I also don't think LU and ROH have the same audience at all.

Oh, I think being opposite NXT definitely hurt ROH. I bet even on this board of hardcore ROH fans plenty of people watch the NXT shows live.

Lucha Underground is debatable in the sense that LU has largely failed to find a non-latino audience at all, but still I think it's likely that ROH and LU going head-to-head slightly hurt both shows.

In any case, we're about to find out how much difference it makes.

[Sandy Fork]

I don't buy that DA aren't paying ROH anything. There has to be a sum of money changing hands.

On the topic of raised attendance: That's not going to happen immediately. That is something that has to happen over time. You cannot expect ROH to start doing 1.5K attendances at every show just because they suddenly got a national cable deal.

[Burnside]

I don't buy that DA aren't paying ROH anything. There has to be a sum of money changing hands.

On the topic of raised attendance: That's not going to happen immediately. That is something that has to happen over time. You cannot expect ROH to start doing 1.5K attendances at every show just because they suddenly got a national cable deal.

There may well be some revenue sharing on the ads, but the station is not paying Sinclair a fee the way they're paying TNA. Meltzer has that from both the ROH and DA sides, and I don't know why he, DA, or ROH would lie about it.

I agree about the attendance; it's too soon to judge.

[Mike0284]

As we reported over the weekend, Ring Of Honor on Destination America will lose its 8 p.m. airing for at least two weeks, starting on 7/29. Destination America wants to try other shows in the 8 p.m. hour, before Impact Wrestling, and see how they do. The change was communicated to ROH in advance, unlike when the Network moved TNA’s Impact from Friday to Wednesday last month.

[WHG]

I agree with Burnside that being opposite NXT and Lucha Underground hurt the 8pm numbers. You have 3 shows competing for a niche of a niche. With such a small audience (85-180k has been the range), Lucha underground doing 80 to 100k plus an estimated 80-100k watching NXT will definitely hurt.

Now, that said the show has been on at 11pm all this time already...and the LU replay is on then as well, so I'm not sure this will change that number too dramatically.

The move to 11pm only is definitely not a positive sign, but I don't read too much into it either way. It's been really unclear what DA's motivation or plan was for ROH and their expectatations. Hopefully they view it as a low cost, low reward way to attract a different audience. From ROH's perspective, I think this deal is simple: it allows fans in their non-SBG markets a way to watch the weekly show on their TV. If DA keeps them around in an even worse timeslot...say like at midnight on Fridays or something...that'd be fine.

I don't think this was ever really about growing the audience. People don't watch Destination America, so the idea that any significant number of people are going to stumble upon ROH on DA and become fans is pretty far-fetched. At best, they can capture some people who have heard of ROH but never had the chance or inclination to watch it before...but even then those people are going to seek the show out and/or DVR it.

To me, the thing we've really learned is just how shockingly old the ROH TV viewing audience is. We could infer that from the Super Beta Prostate and Health Alert Hotline ads on SBG...but seeing the demographics on DA has been really staggering. Some weeks the audience averages 57 years old and is 90% male.

[The Dragon Saga]

I think this could work out for a few reasons:

- The indication has been given that this isn't a permanent timeslot move and that they're going to tryout this Big Foot show to see how it draws compared to ROH. According to TVbythenumbers, ROH is one of the top drawing shows on Destination America behind Impact, and they're getting this show for virtually nothing whereas they're paying out their ass for Impact, or paying more than they'd want.

- It's August, so by the end of this month if Destination America are going to cancel Impact, we'll know. If they do, they could give ROH the 9pm timeslot and still give this Big Foot show or whatever other show they want the 10pm timeslot after ROH. Again, ROH has a contract for 26 weeks and while 11pm isn't great it's still a show drawing better than everything Destnation America has on its network aside from Impact.

- It doesn't help that ROH has been up against NXT and Lucha, take away those, put it at 9pm when Impact is gone and you've got something that is cheap yet viable.

- Dave Meltzer made the point that maybe this is also a way for Destination America to see if ROH as a lead-in was helping Impact. If Impact's numbers drop this week then that'll be a sign to Destination America that Impact isn't a growing property and that cutting ties would be for the best.

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

Are the new shows replacing ROH funded by DA? If so this makes perfect sense, and doesn't mean that DA is pleased or displeased with ROH or the show's performance.
If DA has an investment in a new show, they're going to want to push it in a primetime slot to get it exposure and some return on their investment. If they put it in a crappy timeslot they're just going to lose money. But with ROH they have zero investment so they can't lose any money on it, and they'll still be getting a good return at 11 after Impact.

[Burnside]

Observer reports ratings for Wednesday:

9 p.m. TNA 343,000 viewers

11 p.m. ROH 171,000 viewers

Midnight TNA 64,000 viewers

The ROH number was its second biggest for an individual airing, but obviously the total audience was way down as compared to weeks with two airings. TNA's 9 p.m. show had its biggest number since 6/25.

***

So losing the ROH lead-in obviously didn't hurt Impact at all, at least this week. I would think 171,000 is a good number for DA at 11pm on a Wednesday night.

[WHG]

I do think 171k is a decent start for them at 11pm. The key is the number is higher than their replays had been doing, so they are picking up some of the 8pm viewers and not just losing all of those people.

For reference, the best that TNA had done at 11pm with their replay is 188k back in April when they were doing much better numbers all around, but those numbers were more often in the range of what the ROH replays had been doing on Wednesday nights. Hopefully, the 11 O'Clock show can hit 200k or at least eclipse that 188k number. I think that'd be a good accomplishment.

It was pretty clear early on that ROH wasn't going to really help TNA as a lead in if that was the goal. ROH got slightly better numbers than the shows that had been in that spot, but the viewers weren't sticking around. That first week the Torch reported the detailed viewing patterns and there was a clear audience change-over following ROH (there was a huge spike in viewers at 8:59 when the TNA audience arrived and a huge dropoff by 9:05 when the ROH viewers tapped out).

If anything, there's evidence that a non-wrestling lead in helps their demographics. TNA's actual rating was up from .09 to .11 last night, meaning that more people in the 18-49 demographic watched. ROH and TNA both suffer from having ancient male viewership as the overwhelming majority, so if Bigfoot draws in some younger viewers and Women who then take a few minutes to tune out once TNA starts, that will help the rating if not the viewership totals.

What TNA should really be worried about, though, is that they're still doing significantly worse on Wednesday nights than they were just a few months ago on Friday, which is a worse TV night. Destination America hasn't been patient with anything wrestling-related this year, so I'm not even sure they'll stick with things as-is until after September when they're supposed to be cancelled.

[DXvsNWO1994]

Here are the ratings for this week:

- ROH on Destination America at 11:00 PM did 148,000 viewers this week, which is down slightly from last week (which I believe was 151,000).

- By comparison, TNA's 9:00 PM showing did 270,000 viewers (second lowest for a first run show, according to The Wrestling Observer), while the 12:00 AM replay did 60,000 viewers.