TNA President Dixie Carter comments on whether TNA Impact will change nights, and says she wants WWE to get good television ratings

Dixie Carter is featured in an interview on the TNA website in which she discusses the company's seventh anniversary. She was asked about TNA Impact ratings improving while WWE ratings have generally declined in recent months. "We actually don’t want that to happen,” Carter said. “We want everyone’s ratings to go up. In order to succeed, we don’t think we have to take ratings away from anyone else. As a wrestling industry, we all have to grow the fan-base worldwide.



“We can’t just say we’re going to beat Raw (in the ratings). Right now, that’s unrealistic. We had to start with a more obtainable goal to beat the ratings of our competitor’s third-rated show, ECW – and we’ve done that. I have heard people say, ‘It’s not a big deal to beat their lowest rated show,’ but I disagree. It’s a huge success for TNA, which five years ago had just 300,000 viewers in a Friday afternoon timeslot on Fox Sports. So now we’re setting our sights on their second-rated show, Smackdown – and that gap has closed significantly over the past six months.”

Carter was also asked about the possibility of TNA Impact changing nights. "Nothing is set in stone, but no move is being planned right now," she said. "Our goal has always been to be competitive and go head-to-head against one of our competitor’s programs. So we hope that might happen sometime in the future.” To read the full interview, visit TNAwrestling.com.

Powell's POV: The competitor's program is WWE Raw. Jeff Jarrett has been a big advocate of attempting to recreate the Monday Night War by running on Monday nights opposite WWE. It might sound crazy given the ratings difference between Raw and Smackdown, but the hope for TNA would be that people sample their show during the Raw commercial breaks and like what they see enough to stick around.

If nothing else, I wish Spike TV would give TNA an opportunity to run a live special on a Monday night. I'd be curious to see what TNA could do if they started a two-hour show one hour before Raw went on the air. Dixie commented on a number of topics during the interview, including specific wresters and the TNA talent roster.