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SMACKDOWN LIVE TO FOX, OCTOBER 2019


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4 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

The Mixed Match Challenge was cool but it didnt really work.. by the end WWE was completely phoning it in.

maybe they should try it again at a different time of year, where it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of the build to WM

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I feel like this is the tail end of the rights fees bubble.  The entertainment industry is risk averse and very much into "conventional wisdom" and just doing whatever worked for somebody else.  Execs see everybody chasing "DVR-proof" CONTENT~!, but all the good stuff is taken, so now they're paying out the ass for a tier 2 pseudo sport that can't get top advertisers.  Wrestling is not going to get great ad money directly; it'll just help the network's overall numbers like it does with USA.

Traditional TV just isn't working anymore.  People are DVRing or streaming on demand in increasing numbers.  Rushing to snap up any and all programming that's considered DVR-proof reminds me of when movie studios tried to kill the VCR and when the record industry tried to beat streaming.  It's an aging industry dealing with changing times by digging in its heels, resisting change, and clinging to its old model instead of figuring out how to work inside the new one. 

I feel like, if Fox is around in some form in 10-20 years, we'll all have a laugh over the time they overpaid for pro wrestling to shore up a flagging product.

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I know other people feel differently, but I'm pretty certain that WWE is going to use these few years to sure up their revenue streams in other areas. I think they're going to create that global network that they've hinted at before with centers/region specific shows in China/India/South America/etc. I think they come out of this fairly indestructible for at least another decade or two.

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16 hours ago, Greggulator said:



Vince heads a ship that just inked a $1 billion TV deal that now puts it on the same map as the NFL and MLB.  He's obviously doing something right. And maybe -- just maybe -- it's the product.
 

It's not.  I know you're WWE's chief Fluffer here, but the TV product stinks.  It's listless, boring, uninspired, played safe, no one is a superstar compaired to the real Superstars of yesteryear, everyone is on even keel, programs are rushed through, everything's overscripted.  

 

It's that it's live sports programming when live, unscripted programing is cheaper to produce.  It's that WWE has become synomious with "Wrestling" in the US and it's the only game in town, with the power to have the most eyeballs on it, and it has ZERO competition.  None.  NJPW barely has a US presence, Impact downgraded into a Canadian Indy with 2 PPV's a year, and RoH will never, EVER, be bigger than they are.  The only thing doing a number that would make WWE take any kind of notice is All In, and Vince has the means to keep another one from happening on a whim.

 

What the WWE "Brand" became so valuable and huge is because at the end of the day, for all the shit we give her about her TV appearances, is that in her actual Corporate role, Stephanie Levesque is REALLY fucking good at her job.  Under her tenure as Chief Brand Officer, the WWE has been 'legitimized' by ESPN, 2 different reality shows on E! with WWE talent all over it, deals with Make a Wish, the Be A Star program, the October deal with Komen, Konnor's Cure, the Warrior Award, a HUGE social media presence and leveraging, using specific terms on TV to set WWE apart from every other wrestling on the planet (Championship Oppurtunities, etc), and turning their big 4 PPV's into massive 4 day weekend events, so much that every other indy on the planet sponges off that crowd.

 

It has fuckall to do with the product.  When you're the only game in town, people are going to watch regardless.  Fuck, I can go into multiple examples of Financially successful things that are absolutely shit creatively or otherwise, from movies to our Would-Be King.  Financial Success <> Artistic Merit.  What's worth several Billions of dollars right now, is the Brand.  

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4 minutes ago, Raziel said:

......It's listless, boring, uninspired, played safe...

  

... Financial Success <> Artistic Merit.  What's worth several Billions of dollars right now, is the Brand... 

WWE really might be a perfect fit for network TV, where there's always going to be another singing competition or police procedural.  Safe and dull, filled with me-toos.

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Oh the WOR show this morning Meltzer confirmed that the only TV stations bidding were FOX and USA. The "third" party that supposedly bid a larger sum was a streaming service. (They didn't say who but it appears it was Facebook)

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2 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

WWE really might be a perfect fit for network TV, where there's always going to be another singing competition or police procedural.  Safe and dull, filled with me-toos.

Shit, if NBC could have the Voice go on year round they would. Fox would have done the same with American Idol. And to an extent, they did, but they had to pay more and more for different tv shows to fill out those two hours every week. It would be So You Think You Can Dance or whatever other Idol-adjace show that would go on.

Now Fox has that and it's a proven brand. Fox doesn't have to strike gold on a new show. Like you both said, they paid for something safe that they don't need to develop. They just put the product out there and it'll just do whatever it does.

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It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to avoid giving Vince credit.

A show with AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Shinsuke Nakamura as the featured stars just inked a billion dollar tv contract. Let that sink in for a minute.

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3 minutes ago, JCM said:

It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to avoid giving Vince credit.

At what point didn't I give Vince credit.  He won, he created the only Wrestling promotion worth money in the  United States.  He can crush any competition on a whim.  You think *he* was the one that leveraged all the charity stuff, social media, and Talent visible on multiple outlets outside of WWE TV?

 

Are you going through lengths to not give Steph any credit?

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1 minute ago, Raziel said:

You think *he* was the one that leveraged all the charity stuff, social media, and Talent visible on multiple outlets outside of WWE TV?

What does any of that have to do with the tv contract?

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8 minutes ago, JCM said:

It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to avoid giving Vince credit.

A show with AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Shinsuke Nakamura as the featured stars just inked a billion dollar tv contract. Let that sink in for a minute.

I think there's a joke in there about Rob Feinstein pretending it was $18 billion, but I'm way too classy to make it. 

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3 minutes ago, JCM said:

What does any of that have to do with the tv contract?

It makes the brand more valuable, and noticed  by mainstream, thus attracting more viewers to the TV show, which drives up ratings, which drives up ad rates, which makes the TV rights worth 1 Billion over 5 years. It isn't that hard to see FOX went after something that's already established to fill a slot that's guaranteed 3+ million viewers when they have about 3 shows total that beat that.

 

It would've done that if they had Jinder, Orton, and Bray still at the top of the card instead of AJ, Nakamura, and Bryan.  The parts are interchangible, as the WWE has gone through great lengths to ensure.  Yeah, Bryan's over, but they'll live unharmed if he's gone.  Nak barely registers after his intro.  They lived before AJ, they'll live after.  WWE stopped being about the talent a decade ago.  Nothing is bigger than the WWE, no one.

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This is a weird, random thought, but I was thinking about Fox's pregame coverage for MLB and NFL games as well as Renee's network panels for Network events and it occurred to me: what if maybe the next step in the evolution for the business someday is to treat it like a judged exhibition sport where the workers are doing a "routine" like figure skating or gymnastics. Not necessarily during the show, mind you, but imagine a panel show afterwards where a mix of legit sports people and ex-wrestlers are discussing things like "I'd have given the match five stars, but Nakamura whiffed one of those kicks, so he and AJ only get 4.5 from me."

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While kayfabe's dead and everything I can't imagine ex wrestlers wanting to go that far with discussing it.  I think a more formal form of Talking Smack would be good where wrestlers are discussing the events instead of just giving promos.  Just look at how it started before they caught wind of Daniel being Daniel.  There was honest discussion where they mixed in real life elements without having to betray the story they were telling.  Shit, Baron Corbin showed me a lot promo-wise (or at least fooled me well enough) by being on that show.  Do that on a Fox show and it might work out.  But I just can't see them discussing star ratings and all that.

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1 hour ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

This is a weird, random thought, but I was thinking about Fox's pregame coverage for MLB and NFL games as well as Renee's network panels for Network events and it occurred to me: what if maybe the next step in the evolution for the business someday is to treat it like a judged exhibition sport where the workers are doing a "routine" like figure skating or gymnastics. Not necessarily during the show, mind you, but imagine a panel show afterwards where a mix of legit sports people and ex-wrestlers are discussing things like "I'd have given the match five stars, but Nakamura whiffed one of those kicks, so he and AJ only get 4.5 from me."

I doubt you would see anything like that from WWE, but a post-show say on Fox Sports 2 with people like Meltzer/Keller/Etc actually taking about the show/business? I could see something like that.

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People act like WWE failing upward is a new thing. In the last decade how many stretches of good tv have they had?

i give them major props on the business end and on the creative end for turning over  the entire roster over the past few years and creating a glut of upper card talent. Yes, they don't know what to with the talent other than fill tv time but it's still impressive.

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Raw had a stretch of pretty good tv this year for about 4 or 5 weeks. Pretty good, but not memorable.

A bunch of the episodes during the Braun/Roman feud were good too. Either that, or the Braun/Roman stuff was so freaking good that it made the whole show good. Probably the latter. 

Regarding Colin, he and Skip deserve each other. Each guy is a repugnant piece of shit. Colin shit all over UFC at one point, even dropping the human cockfighting line, up until UFC became a hot thing and Fox picked it up. Same thing now with WWE. He'll kiss WWE's ass up and down and with UFC exiting Fox, I guarantee he'll make it a repetitive talking point that WWE is far superior to UFC.

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I just remembered that I read a few years ago (has it been that long?) that the brand split redux was USA's idea. Anyone know if theres any truth to that? I could see the argument for ending it in that case based on that alone. Its one thing now, when both shows are on the same network, but moving forward i can't see either network being happy with getting half the roster. 

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