The image that its viewers are of lower income level (and lower spending habits) and thus the effect on the rates that advertisers (and which advertisers in general) are willing to pay for slots on wrestling shows. Whether it has merit nowadays or not, I don't know but that has been the challenge for the last 20 years.
Wrestling as a phenomenon has for a very long time drawn big audiences, but never has been given its due (or the monetary compensation) compared to other types of programming, due to the presumption of its audience.
(And of course I'd imagine the only major company being run by Vince may have had an effect as well.)
That's why you had the Westminster Dog Show causing RAW to be pre-empted, even when they had 4-5 million viewers.
This is why TK has made sure to mention in the past that data shows their audience is the highest earners across the wrestling companies.
He knows how the industry is seen and a lot of what he has been doing is to re-educate the fans and the networks on what makes good wrestling and why it's a valuable property.
Him being an analytics nerd and having experience with networks in areas other than wrestling is probably the best thing you could hope for. He knows that numbers talk and will no doubt have tonnes of data to sell the idea of a much bigger deal when it comes up.
Honestly I feel like this whole "what if the new network guy hated wrestling?" Is such tired bullshit because while it may not have the weight of the NFL etc, it is still a relatively cheap product that can do great numbers comparatively. The fact you apparently have the streaming platforms sniffing round wrestling and other 'smaller' sports will also help them greatly.
As for that wrestletalk article, while I enjoy watching them, they are also pretty shit for industry analysis and just parrot what has been said elsewhere.