"Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it."--George Santayana

At the height of the Monday Night Wars of the late 90's, Eric Bischoff was able to persuade programming suits at TNT to expand WCW Monday Nitro to three hours. Unfortunately, by that point, the NWO had peaked, even if Bischoff didn't realize this right away. Of course you know that such tactical mistakes would ultimately come back to bite Bischoff, as WWE would recover.

Nearly 10 years later, USA Network programming head Bonnie Hammer apparently hasn't learned a thing from Bischoff's folly. Reports circulating around newsboards such as 2xzone have USA pushing for Raw to expand to 3 hours so they can maintain their #1 ranking in the ratings as it relates to certain demographic groups. What Hammer fails to understand is that it's enough of a chore putting enough matches together for a 125 minute (2 hrs., 5 minutes) live show. To add one more hour will test and tax the creative team, true, but it will also run the risk of driving away the same viewers they want to retain. Not only that, but right now, the only competition WWE has on Mondays is the International Fight League (IFL) on MyNetworkTV, which is in its 2nd hour as Raw comes on the air most weeks. TNA is not ready to shift to Mondays, but then........

Speaking of TNA, Jeff Jarrett & Dixie Carter have been meeting with Fox suits about adding TNA to their roster. TNA Impact moved from Fox Sports Net, where it didn't have a steady, stable timeslot in a lot of cities, to Spike in 2005, where it now has a comfortable prime time berth on Thursdays. Talk had been that TNA might find a home on MyNetworkTV, either by moving Impact there or launching a 2nd series to complement Impact. Nothing's been settled and negotiations are still ongoing at last check, but it appears to me that TNA may also be reaching for something beyond their grasp.

Creatively, TNA is in a worse situation than WWE. With only one hour a week (airing twice, actually), TNA has to rotate their talent in their ring and try to cram as many storylines into the hour as humanly possible. Jarrett, I'm sure, is hungry to get that extra hour, but he first has to present a product that IS a viable alternative to WWE, and right now TNA isn't quite there. This is where Vince Russo becomes an asset instead of a liability. Russo went through the lean years in WWE and knows what needs to be done to make TNA competitive enough to warrant reigniting the Monday Night Wars. The question, then, is if his pal Jarrett is willing to listen to reason.

And there's the matter of Bischoff's contract with WWE "expiring soon". The last thing Vince McMahon wants is for Bischoff to suddenly show up in TNA as the "last piece of the puzzle". WWE is suffering from creative complacency now, the same way WCW was in 1998. McMahon is paying Paul Heyman to do other stuff, like writing screenplays for movies, rather than return to TV because Heyman comes across to the McMahons as too much of a rebel against their tunnel-visioned world view. If both Heyman & Bischoff are allowed to walk, TNA would scoop them both up in 2 heartbeats, and Vince knows that.

So, let's recap:

1. Will Raw expand full-time to three hours? No, not yet. There's no need for it, other than to satisfy the greed of USA Network and its corporate parent, NBC-Universal.

2. Will TNA Impact expand to 2 hours? Yes, eventually, because the way the show is structured now, they need the extra time to allow breathing room for all of their storylines.

3. Will TNA have a 2nd network home? I see Xplosion becoming that 2nd show, but Jarrett is better served if he can keep all the eggs in one basket and have Xplosion join Impact on Spike. A fitting scenario would have Xplosion air in the Saturday slot currently used for Impact repeats. I don't really see them going back to Fox unless they land at MyNetworkTV. Xplosion, then, would also have to expand to 2 hours to be the weblet's answer to Friday Night Smackdown.

4. Will the Monday Night Wars start again? Yes, but not until next year. If Jarrett is going to make a direct run at Raw, he is going to have to do it on his own, because Vince isn't about to give him Bischoff and/or Heyman on a silver platter. McMahon may've played the part of a deranged lunatic on television, but he is savvy enough to realize how valuable those two players are to the competition.