By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

TNA president Dixie Carter gave an optimistic and safe "State of TNA" interview discussing the company's position entering year seven. Carter said she doesn't want TNA to take away from WWE's business, but they want to surpass Smackdown's TV ratings on the way to challenging Raw.

Carter, trying to appeal to the emotionally-invested fans who will read the interview, acknowledged that TNA has insulted the intelligence of its audience at times. It was a good quote to give the appearance to TNA's audience that she is in-tune with the product and criticism of the product.

"The audience of 2009 is significantly different from the audience during the height of the WWF-WCW run. And we have to continue to change accordingly," Carter said. "Today's fans are smarter, more involved. They don't want their intelligence insulted, and we have been guilty of that at times in the past. Can we please everyone all the time? No, that's not realistic. But you have to strive to please them much more than not."

Carter also said TNA wants to compete head-to-head with WWE programming. She didn't say it necessarily had to be on Monday nights against Raw, though.

"Nothing is set in stone, but no move (from Thursday nights) is being planned right now," Carter said. "Our goal has always been to be competitive and go head-to-head against one of our competitor's programs. So we hope that might happen sometime in the future."

Following are highlights of the interview TNA's official website published.

-- Carter on achieving goals: "I think we have accomplished more in the last six-to-12-months than we have in the last several years. I look at our ratings over the last year, and they are up more than 20 percent."

-- Carter on TV ratings: "We want everyone's ratings to go up. In order to succeed, we don't think we have to take ratings away from anyone else. As a wrestling industry, we all have to grow the fan-base worldwide.

-- Carter on competing with WWE (which I will analyze in a separate story to measure her claims): "We can't just say we're going to beat Raw (in the ratings). Right now, that's unrealistic. We had to start with a more obtainable goal to beat the ratings of our competitor's third-rated show, ECW – and we've done that.

"I have heard people say, 'It's not a big deal to beat their lowest rated show,' but I disagree. It's a huge success for TNA, which five years ago had just 300,000 viewers in a Friday afternoon timeslot on Fox Sports. So now we're setting our sights on their second-rated show, Smackdown - and that gap has closed significantly over the past six months."

-- Carter on changes to the TNA roster: "We have an amazingly talented group of young guys ready to break out in a big way. It is their time," she said. "The landscape in TNA over the next 12 months is going to change dramatically. Our veterans are here to show that their greatness is beyond themselves and to help create other superstars. These (veterans) are secure enough to know that that's what is needed for this company to continue to grow. Their leadership in and out of the ring is unmatched."

Link: Read the full interview on TNA's website

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