The Heat and the Shine

The news that WWE Smackdown is moving to Tuesdays (and airing live, and splitting from Raw) generated a lot of discussion yesterday.  Absent from most of said discussion was talk about the current residents of Tuesday night wrestling, TNA. That TNA has become an afterthought to most pro wrestling fans is hardly news.  The promotion has gone from a struggling cable network to an under-distributed cable network to, now, an unknown cable network.  All of this at a time where streaming is more popular and audiences are more fractionalized and all of the other problematic things that get written about modern linear television. From the outside looking in, TNA's adventure on Pop TV has appeared to be especially harrowing. The TNA-Pop marriage initially appeared to be a match made in heaven, with Pop in need of loyally watched content (TNA maintained 18-49 demographic ratings around 0.10, even with the limited distribution of Destination America) and TNA in need of wide distributio

This morning, Entertainment Industry Press Release Aggregator Variety  broke the news that WWE is re-doing the much-reviled Brand Extension.  While the term "Brand Extension" was wisely avoided, Variety 's echoing of WWE press materials report indicated that the new WWE will have all of the traits of the old Brand Extension era: separate rosters, separate writing staffs and separate angles. WWE's press release focuses on the fact that Smackdown will now air live, but that's hardly the big news to wrestling fans.  The bigger news is that Smackdown is moving to Tuesdays and that the roster is being split up. Luckily for wrestling fans, WWE's burying of the lede will have no effect on the volume of commentary on the Raw/Smackdown split.  Countless podcasts, websites and, yes, this blog, will happily provide takes for fans' perusal. This blog is going to let the news sink in and save its take on The Split for another day.  Hopefully that take will be j