On a recent episode of his My World podcast, Jeff Jarrett talked about the Destination X 2008 pay-per-view event as well as working with Jakks Pacific and the rumor of trying to get Impact Wrestling to do live tapings.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Working With Jakks Pacific: “Marvel was our first big partner, Marvel Toys. They had not TNA issues, they had internal issues, major issues. So, that licensee kind of, if I recall, kind of died on the vine and then here comes Jakks, and Jakks I believe, they were a leader in the marketplace, but they were leaving and going their separate ways with WWE. So, for us to get the opportunity to work with Jakks was you can’t understate it Conrad. It was huge, because it was their track record, their shelf space, their knowledge and know-how, their voter confidence with the brand. I learned a lot from Jeremy [Padawer], who’s now with the organization who handles AEW action figures.”
On trying to air Impact live every other week in 2008: “I don’t think it was necessary, but did I think it would have a huge lift in the ratings? Here’s my answer, and I probably said these exact words to Kevin and others. Is it going to be an immediate lift? Probably not. There’s enough data out their to look at RAW, Smackdown, Nitro, Thunder, whatever it may be. Taped versus live in that it all depends on the real core of the content. You got to give them something they want to see. The right night of the week with the right promotion, so many other factors whether it’s live versus not live. What I did say is when you’re taping at the current model, we were doing three shows in two days. So basically, a show and a half and a show and a half. The tax on the entire system — not just talent, but you’re asking Kurt Angle or Kevin Nash or Samoa Joe to go out twice in one night. So just by the simple division of, there’s only so much energy, and a talent — if you’ve got to have an in-ring interview, then you’ve got to have a match and then a backstage, you’re doing so many different things your energy is split. Your brain power split, and that’s just not talent. That’s creative, that’s production, that’s kind of a time length just overall. So, going live every week I thought would make the product better.
“And also the immediacy of a focus group that if you do a show on a Thursday you’ve got to the following Thursday to either correct what you know you screwed up on, improve, pivot. If you got an injury, you got six or seven days if you’re doing back-to-back shows and whether it’s injury and you immediately go to do a rewrite or that didn’t go well, or talent rightly or wrongly so have an issue with something. There’s so many different variables. So, I didn’t think the ratings would immediately lift, but I did think the product would get better and better and also thought that as the natural growth of the company is if we went live every Thursday it could help us. Hey, we’re on Thursday night go see us at live event X,Y, and Z this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I was hoping for a rhythm of TV on Thursday house shows Friday and Saturday maybe a Sunday and then crank it up. That’s what I was hoping the system would turn into.”
