Ever since Tony Khan bought ROH, the biggest question has been television. Now we have an answer for 2023: No TV at all.

Why didn’t it happen?

A big announcement came after Ring of Honor’s Final Battle 2022 was finished, that Tony Khan was reviving Honor Club for $10 a month, and it would be home to Ring of Honor’s weekly TV show once it has been revived. This was met with both derision and disappointment as a lot of wrestling media folks were giving us the impression that some kind of broadcast television deal would be coming for ROH any day now, along with that streaming deal with HBO Max that none of us had any intel about but many of us believed would be a done deal any day now.  And now reality has set in, at least about Ring of Honor getting on television of any kind.  It’s not happening now and more than likely isn’t happening later.

So what gives?  How did something that a lot of people convinced themselves was probable if not likely turn into something that has no chance in hell (thank you Vince)?  Well, in my estimation it didn’t have much of a chance in the first place and everyone who believed it did was playing themselves, Tony Khan included.  I don’t if you guys took too many Dave Meltzer happy pills or made an assumption based off of AEW’s success with television or what, but you should have never bet on this one.  Why?  Well for the answers we need to go back a few years before we look at today.  And here’s the big take:

The Landscape has Changed

In 2018 when Tony Khan was meeting with the Elite to come up with what would be known as All Elite Wrestling, the TV landscape for pro wrestling was entirely different.  Mainly, it was a lot less crowded.  Here’s what the televised wrestling slate looked like in 2018:

• 5 hours of WWE (3 RAW, 2 Smakcdown)
• 2 hours each of Impact and MLW
• 1 hour each of ROH and New Japan

Now fast forward to today.  Just counting shows that are on TV and not streaming, we have:

• 7 hours of WWE (3 RAW, 2 Smackdown, 2 NXT)
• 3 hours of AEW (2 Dynamite, 1 Rampage)
• 2 hours of Impact and MLW
• 1 hour of New Japan and WOW women’s wrestling

That’s 16 hours today vs. 11 four years ago, a virtual 50 percent increase.  Now you tell me, do you have 50 percent more time and/or energy to watch pro wrestling?  Probably not!  And we haven’t even gotten to the extra hours of programming when it’s a pay per view weekend, anywhere from three to seven more hours depending on who all is running one that weekend.  For all intents and purposes the TV wrestling market is beyond saturated.  You would have been hard pressed to find many people who watched all 11 hours in 2018, so you know it would be almost impossible to find even one person who watches all 16 today.  Any network executive worth his or her salt can see the dropoff from Smackdown’s 2 million to Dynamite’s 900 thousand to Impact’s sub-200 thousand weekly viewership, and realize that adding yet another hour to what exists is more likely to get you on the low end and not the high one. And with 200 thousand or less in network TV, syndication or a major basic cable channel you’re in ‘Infomercials will bring in more money than this’ territory.

For all intents and purposes, the space to add more wrestling TV shows was eaten up in 2019 when Dynamite premiered and NXT went live on USA Network.  And since then AEW added Rampage while WOW essentially replaced ROH.  Out of the nine shows that air on television Rampage, the one directly in the middle of the pack, can’t even get 500 thousand viewers according to Nielsen.  That’s a drop from 2 million for the number one show (Smackdown) to 400 thousand for the fifth highest show, a 75 percent drop.  If you think that’s insignificant go look at how many police shows are on network TV, then compare number 1 to number 5 and you’ll see that the percentage drop is a lot smaller.  If the demand for pro wrestling was that big then you’d see a lot more shows on TV than there are now.  NWA and New Japan Strong would be on television already.  AEW’s YouTube shows, Dark and Dark Elevation, would be on television.  Hell, NXT UK would have gotten an hour on USA or FS1 as well.  Long story short, whatever remaining demand there was in 2018 for pro wrestling on TV has been met and there isn’t any left to warrant giving another company a TV deal.

But that’s not all.  No, there’s one more thing:

ROH just isn’t appealing 

I say this as an ROH fan, someone who was watching and attending ROH shows up until and including Final Battle 2022.  Ring of Honor is the ultimate niche product, loved by a vocal few inside of what is already a small bubble within the realm of entertainment.  I say this with nothing but love; look at Ring of Honor’s product from aesthetics to overall presentation and tell me if that is the kind of thing that you are going to convince a TV network to pay you for.  It isn’t.  ROH lasted on TV under Sinclair because they were owned by the same people who owned all the TV stations and were cheap programming.  In fact they weren’t cheap, they were free once the production and the talent was paid for.  Any type of rights deal, even a low rate one, eliminates the very thing that made them an asset for Sinclair.

But without that they just don’t pass the eye test for the people who’s attention you hope to get if you want it to grow beyond it’s existing, small audience.  Let me put it like this – if people called AEW, which at least looks like they spend some money to produce, a low rent/bootleg WWE what would they call ROH?  I can’t see any scenario in which a TV executive watches any ROH programming and says ‘yeah, sign us up to pay millions of dollars per year for that’.  Ring of Honor TV in 2021 was looking a step up from the old territory shows in the 1980s, and while some see a charm in that it’s also a barrier to getting new people to try it. I’m not saying you need a full on WWE style production, but if they can’t match or come close to what AEW does than good luck selling that.

In closing yeah, you should have never expected an ROH TV deal to happen.  A product that looks outdated, no matter how good it actually was, in a market that has shrunk considerably over the last 4 years – largely because of the man who bought them and the show he’s been running since 2019.  If you’re pulling for them to succeed and you have the means I suggest you sign up for Honor Club because that’s the only way you’re gonna get to see them every week.