Impact TV Update: Potential Bad News as Talks With AXS TV May Have Failed

There are more reports today that talks between AXS TV and Impact’s parent company, Anthem Media, appear to have fallen through.

Anthem had been in talks with AXS TV since December to both buy the network and move over Impact’s weekly show. PWInsider reported yesterday that there were rumors that the deal was dead, and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported the same today, saying that the talks “appear to have fallen through” and calling it a potential “disaster” for Impact. “Talks with AXS have appeared to have fallen through which is a disaster since the company has had the expectation they would get on AXS for months,” Dave Meltzer said in the Observer.

PWInsider did say yesterday that several sources told them that the talks are still active, so we’ll see what happens.

Impact announced on Tuesday that they renewed their agreement with Twitch to stream their weekly show there, and that was apparently related to the AXS TV deal falling through, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter said.

People in Impact were confident that they would be moving to AXS TV by this month, but that hasn’t happened.

There were rumors circulating at the Impact TV tapings this past weekend that AXS TV decided against picking up another wrestling show since they already have NJPW and WOW. Those rumors have been “confirmed,” the Observer says.

The talks of Anthem buying AXS have now also “evidently fallen through.”

If the AXS TV deal has in fact fallen through, Anthem has been looking at other potential channels to air Impact, PWInsider says. Impact landing on a better network is probably a necessity for the survival of the company, since Pursuit is barely watched by anyone (the last report had Impact on Pursuit doing about 10,000 viewers) and has been riddled with programming errors.