TNA News: Destination America Memo Cancelling ‘Impact Wrestling’ Leaks, When Will It Be Cut?

TNA’s Impact Wrestling program may in deep trouble. It was reported last week that Destination America was not totally happy with TNA and planned to cut them in the third quarter of this year, which was a big deal. Apparently, Destination America has an “out-clause” which allows them to cut TNA if they do not feel it is worthy enough to keep around at any point.

On Wednesday, the news broke that Ring of Honor would be coming to Destination America starting next Wednesday, which caught most of the world by surprise. Very few people knew ROH was talking to Destination America about a deal and many knew that once ROH hit the network, TNA’s days must have been numbered. Those instincts are correct, as Destination America WILL be cancelling Impact Wrestling in September.

According to Ewrestlingnews, the memo regarding TNA being dropped by Destination America leaked today. Here is what it had to say…

“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 [Do Not Advertise] list.”

Destination America knows that TNA was bringing in relatively good ratings for what it was, which is why they feel wrestling is of use on their network. However, they pay TNA a lot of money and the company needs far more to operate than an ROH for example. The deal with Ring of Honor is by no means similar to the deal TNA has. The ratings for TNA did not do enough for them and being on do not advertise lists was clearly a huge bummer in the eyes of Destination America officials and TNA itself.

Unsurprisingly, TNA talent was upset about being left in the dark about all of this. TNA President Dixie Carter did a conference call with talent yesterday to update them on their deal as well as their knowledge on the ROH surprise. People such as MVP put their booking information out online already, proving that the outcome does not appear to be good for TNA.

It does seem that TNA will still move to Wednesday soon as the ROH press release noted that ROH would work as a lead-in on Wednesday for Impact, so this memo was probably sent out a while back. TNA will air up until September but after that, be prepared to see them leave and ROH to get a bigger push on the network. At the end of the day, ROH is more cost effective and they will probably end up drawing more money for the network in the end as advertisers appear to not hate ROH at this point.

[IMG Credit: ImpactWrestling,com]