June 27, 2005 Observer Newsletter: TNA Slammiversary, CM Punk wins ROH World title

TNA enters its third year with the same major questions it has entering year one and year two. What it the business plan to make money?

After two years of major money losses, limited visibility, and lots of very good wrestling matches, the company finds itself back to where it started, trying to run PPV shows without any television. While this is not 100%, it does appear the decision has been made to not buy air time on FSN this summer, and wait for Spike TV to be cleared of its WWE commitments in late September. It’s a risky proposition for a number of reasons, the biggest being, in the television business, if you don’t have a signed deal, you don’t have a deal, although the word we get is people are very confident this deal will come through, but we also heard that about the last deal.

There doesn’t appear to be a backup plan, now that WGN is out of the running. Two things regarding the negotiations with Spike TV that have come out are they are looking at the Velocity time slot, which is what we had figured but was not confirmed, Saturday at 11 p.m., and that Spike wants TNA to pay for the time, something we’re told was not the case with WGN.

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