Impact Rumor Mill: Impact Wrestling may sign with TruTV, WGN, or SyFy in 2019
What's the story
Impact Wrestling is currently going through TV negotiations with PopTV, and with PopTV looking to bring in a new wrestling promotion to the prime-time slot, what does this mean for Impact Wrestling?
In case you didn't know...
Impact Wrestling has gone through many changes over the past sixteen years, and they have used the old Pay-Per-View format to host live weekly shows for US$9.99 a week in their earlier days.
The company's biggest move was signing with SpikeTV (now Paramount) in 2005, where the organisation would reach the neighborhood of 1.5 million viewers (on average) each week. Impact would lose their television deal with Spike in 2015, and sign a one year deal with Destination America.
Due to their poor ratings and lack of viewership in general, Destination America prematurely ended their agreement.
Impact would then sign with PopTV in 2016, and have been with the television company since then. The viewership has gone up since the days of Destination America, but nowhere near the numbers they once reached with Spike.
The heart of the matter
On the PWTorch Livecast with Mike McMahon and Andrew Soucek during their post-Impact Wrestling podcast, they discussed the potential candidates for a future television deal for Impact Wrestling.
The current deal with PopTV is up on January 3rd, 2019, which means their go-home show for Impact Wrestling: Homecoming is "up in the air" with regards which TV network we will be watching it on.
The company could remain with PopTV under a new deal. However, there's a good chance they could be making some moves with networks like WGN, TruTV or SyFy. Realistically, any of these three networks would be a huge move for Impact Wrestling in terms of bringing their viewership numbers back up, and reaching as many households as possible.
For the complete story, you may listen to Mike and Andrew discuss this topic at around the 7:50 mark on the embedded link below.
What's next
Impact Wrestling will continue to air on PopTV until the beginning of 2019. Impact Wrestling currently airs on their new time slot of 10pm (EST), which is not a good time slot for the company to be in, considering they have been airing in prime time for the past decade.
They will be having a live Twitch special entitled "Gold Rush" on November 30th at 7pm (EST). After that, they will be hosting Impact Wrestling: Homecoming from the Asylum in Nashville, TN, on Pay-Per-View on January 6th, 2019.
Hopefully, Impact will have their television deal sorted out in time to properly promote the show and make 2019 one of their best years to date!