Russo Response

Quickly, on Vince Russo. As to whether he’s a good booker fundamentally, I think his track record speaks for itself. As for the notion that he’s doing well because “ratings are up,” I have 5 responses:

1. They aren’t that much. TNA has popped a 1.2 previously this year, and the shows are generally in the range they had been doing. They are only up slightly.

2. It’s hard to give Russo credit given this is during a period when they switched to prime time and when Kurt Angle has been regularly and prominently featured. With those three factors, I can’t imagine Russo being the primary explanation for a mild increase.

3. Of course ratings are going to increase slightly when you hotshot like crazy. That’s the whole point of hotshotting. In the old territory days, you could do a billion angles and temporarily increase business, but most promoters would avoid overdoing gimmicks because long term it burns out interest. Hotshotting and then pointing to short term ratings increases shouldn’t work on people that understand how pro wrestling works.

4. Since when did short term, mild TV ratings increases matter all that much? The whole lesson this year from WWE is you can retain ratings and have your PPVs collapse. PPV is the greater potential revenue stream for TNA. TNA should have used Joe-Angle as the big breakthrough for the company, and they have gone through it incredibly fast with little PPV bang for the buck. That’s a direct result of the TV booking.

5. Russo produced better short term TV ratings results in WCW. Hello?