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SMACKDOWN LIVE TO FOX, OCTOBER 2019


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AJ, Cesaro, Bryan, Harper, Hardy, Rusev, Joe, Nakamura - The Smackdown 8, plus Sheamus, Usos, New Day, Miz etc etc, not so shabby. Not to mention the women which we weren't so spoilt with back then. We don't know how good we've got it. Smackdown is amazing.

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11 minutes ago, King Leonidas Of Sparta said:

AJ, Cesaro, Bryan, Harper, Hardy, Rusev, Joe, Nakamura - The Smackdown 8, plus Sheamus, Usos, New Day, Miz etc etc, not so shabby. Not to mention the women which we weren't so spoilt with back then. We don't know how good we've got it. Smackdown is amazing.

And Cass.

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40 minutes ago, Michael Sweetser said:

Yet another quote: Success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard.

Unrelated to wrestling. But with Deadpool, I compared Rob Liefeld to a deadbeat dad who only showed up when the kid was an NFL star. 

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6 hours ago, OSJ said:

Vic, you're first line is perhaps the truest critique of wrestling ever written. Bravo.

Years ago Jim Cornette said very much the same thing: Great talent can overcome terrible writing, great writing can't overcome terrible talent.

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9 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Side Tangent (or something to just file away)

With FOX completely losing the UFC package - it increases the chances that shows like NXT and 205 Live get put on FS1

Will it actually end up happening - who knows? (Actually probably not but clearly they are afraid to waste money)

I would imagine for either of those shows to move to FS1, Fox would have to see the viewer numbers for the Network, and they’d have to be comparable to existing programming.  It’d be interesting to have actual ratings info on those shows.

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Isn't the knock with FS1 is that their non live-sports ratings are so inconsequential that even a few hundred thousand viewers would be seen as a massive success? Or has that changed as time has gone on.

I could see 205 Live benefiting from having a little bit more exposure through FS1.

I think it would be a mistake though to put NXT on regular broadcast TV. It feels like that weekly NXT is a legitimate draw for the Network and I could see them losing a few subscriptions without that as a regular lure to interact with the Network on a weekly basis.

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Okay the WON finally was posted. I am not posting the whole thing but blurbs (the whole thing mixes both the WWE deals and the UFC to ESPN stuff so it is a lot to weed through)

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WWE has come out with the best of all world’s in its television negotiations, with Raw remaining on the USA Network in its Monday 8-11:05 p.m. time slot and Smackdown moving to Friday nights from 8-10 p.m. on the FOX Network.

Both new deals go into effect in October 2019.

The five-year deal, which would go through September 30, 2024, was estimated by one insider as worth about $4 million per week, and printed reports listed it as $205 million per year (virtually the same) and the two deals combined were talked about in the $445 million to $475 million range.

 

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The WWE’s deals with both USA and FOX, for a combined $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion over the five years, covers October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2024.

 

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The FOX offer for Raw was believed to be in the range of $240 million to $270 million.

 

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On 5/23/2018 at 12:05 PM, CSC said:

The other stuff I get - Carmella as champ is about the worst option with the current women's division but they're still majorly featured and usually given 2 major matches/segments on a show where there's only ever 5 or 6 total and Sanity is suffering from being way too similar to a Bludgeon Bros feel. 

With those, Sanity would be safe- say what people will about Road Dogg, but he's very good at booking the tag teams in WWE.

The women on the other hand- the only way to explain the real problem with them is "Road Dogg books the women to their stans on social media."

With the women in particular in WWE today: A lot of fans just have ONE WOMAN they like, and that's it. They're ride or die for her, and only her. They don't give a damn about any other woman in the company but her- and indeed, they actively HATE any other woman on the show but her (because any moment you give any shine to that other woman is a moment you could have given to make THEIR favorite a little more popular.) And if you don't give them their favorite as a star, they'll bitch and moan and whine and cry and hijack and (from Tuesday) send death threats on social media because their favorite lost a fake fight on a kids' show. 

So how do you react when that's the way?

You make multi-woman match after multi-woman match, with no particular storylines.

Why bother making women's storylines? The fans have made it clear they made their choice and they'll stand by it. You can book their favorite into oblivion or not even book her, and they'll still only care about their favorite...and no matter if you make the greatest storyline known to man for one of the other women on the show, they're not going to turn to that storyline and enjoy it because they just refuse to like the woman who's benefitting from the storyline, and they refuse to like her because they chose someone else and nothing else will make them feel it's a good storyline except "my favorite's dancing around with a pwetty bwue and white title with their logo on it and everything!" 

All you have to do to placate those fans is just multi-woman matches with no storylines. Every woman is in the title picture, so every one of the stans gets to be happy that their favorite has a fighting chance to one day be SD Women's Champion...but yet, every woman matters, but no woman MATTERS.  Every woman is special, so no woman is truly special. If a woman was a star going into this era, they were quickly hammered down to prop up the very worst women on the roster because "Well...what about THEIR fans? THEY need to be seen as special too!" Every Diva was Given A Chance. JUST a Chance. And nothing else. 

That is why the SD women have bombed. 

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wrestling-rights-shakeup-fox-nabs-wwe-espn-signs-ufc-nbc-gets-raw-1115156

 

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On May 17 at 9:30 a.m., WWE executive Stephanie McMahon and her husband, Paul Levesque — better known as the fearsome wrestler Triple H — walked into a conference room on the 44th floor of 21st Century Fox's Manhattan headquarters. They were there for a pitch meeting with Fox leadership, who were eager to acquire WWE's programming, which includes the weekly Raw and SmackDown Live.

Both shows have been fixtures on NBCUniversal cable networks, and NBCU was fully expecting to keep things that way with a new 10-year deal worth $360 million, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. But Peter Rice, chairman and CEO of Fox Networks Group, knew that NBCU's exclusive negotiating window was due to lapse at 4:59 p.m. ET on May 16. By the end of the meeting, the two sides had shaken hands on a five-year deal for SmackDown — the live Friday night showcase — worth $1.025 billion.

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The deal first sparked into life when Rice phoned Khan (repping WWE) weeks earlier and asked to meet immediately should NBCU not exercise an option to retain SmackDown, which averages 2.6 million viewers a week on USA. NBCU had the right to match any offer of $200 million or less per year; Fox came in with $205 million. And Fox was offering more than cash. The elder Murdoch insisted NBCU was "embarrassed by your product." Fox, he said, would fully embrace WWE, with SmackDown promos airing across sports programming every night of the week, along with a weekly studio show on FS1. More than that, the deal, Lachlan Murdoch told McMahon during a private call at the end of the meeting, would herald the marriage of the Murdochs and the McMahons, rebel outsiders who had built media empires. (McMahon's father, Vince, took over WWE from his father in the '80s.)

 

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

If Vince has that meeting instead do they even come anywhere close to getting the same amount of money?

If it's Vince, I wouldn't be shocked if security is escorting him out halfway through. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Technico Support did a great write-up already of why this deal is the result of the dying tv business model than any real creative genius on WWE's part, and I have to say it's pretty depressing news as a whole. You can bank on the product we've been slogging through for the last 4 years to continue unabated as long as Vince is with the company. Remember WM 32-34? Get ready for a lot more of those.

The positive spin is that HHH pretty much has a fool-proof empire in place when Vince finally goes and will likely produce big-time wrestling shows that more closely align with my tastes as a fan when he gets the keys. Until then I'll just keep giving them $10 a month for NXT and the ability to watch some old shows whenever I want, which seems like a fair deal.

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  • 2 weeks later...
18 minutes ago, nofuture said:

Since WWE's made their official announcement, WWE's stock is after-hours trading at $77, up from $66.63 at today's closing.  Pretty insane that their stock has almost quadrupled in one year. 

I've been a very happy shareholder as of the past few months.

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