The idea behind the Destination America deal with Ring of Honor is that it could go one of three ways. If Ring of Honor, as the lead-in to Impact Wrestling can draw good ratings and if the TNA/Destination America situation remains the same, then Destination America will continue as planned and announce Impact Wrestling’s cancellation in August for the final quarter of the year starting in September. Ring of Honor, which is signed for December, will then have a two to three month run as the sole wrestling program on the station which will be an experiment to see if it can hold its own without Impact in prime time. If Impact Wrestling’s ratings are more significant than ROH’s then it is plausible that Destination America will not renew ROH in December and instead either change their mind on Impact or continue with its plan to cancel it. If both produce strong ratings than the three hour wrestling block will have worked and both may remain on the station.
Ring of Honor has some leverage as it’s the cheaper promotion to have. Ring of Honor is produced by Sinclair Broadcasting for SBG channels which can be seen in 41% of the United States. ROH begins on NESN (New England Sports Network) this Saturday which gives it a 44% presence on syndication and a 51% presence on cable because of Destination America. ROH is significantly cheaper to produce as its not original programming. A television executive Dave Meltzer spoke to said that ROH has been speaking to a number of cable networks about getting the show on-air under a barter deal where they provide the programming at little to no cost but keep a part of the commercial advertising revenue.
A Ring of Honor representative has said that they will further improve the production of the show for TV tapings and pay-per-view starting at their New York City events on 6/20 and 6/21, the latter being their first TV taping with the Destination America exposure which will be heavily promoted as they now have foresight available to them.
Source: Wrestling Observer
