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AEW - 2019


Dolfan in NYC

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36 minutes ago, Fallacy! said:

I can't wait for The Revival's "THE SUITS UP NORTH DON'T APPRECIATE REAL 'RASSLIN" promo on the debut episode of AEW.

The pop when the first words they speak on AEW are “Fuck the Revival!” is going to be quite loud.

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1 hour ago, Thibs said:

That and the whole “we’re not gonna have writers, the wrestlers are gonna be the writers” stuff 

I don’t know why you’ve glommed onto this as something preposterous.  Wrestlers are creative people.  Their job is literally to tell stories.  And, in case you haven’t noticed over the years, they frequently have better ideas about what gets over with audiences than a room full of failed sitcom writers.

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8 minutes ago, EVA said:

I don’t know why you’ve glommed onto this as something preposterous.  Wrestlers are creative people.  Their job is literally to tell stories.  And, in case you haven’t noticed over the years, they frequently have better ideas about what gets over with audiences than a room full of failed sitcom writers.

And it's not like AEW has massive content commitments right now. They're on the hook for two live events, and maybe 60-120 minutes of TV at some indeterminate date, most of which will be wrestling.

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4 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

And it's not like AEW has massive content commitments right now. They're on the hook for two live events, and maybe 60-120 minutes of TV at some indeterminate date, most of which will be wrestling.

That’s the thing, if its mostly wrestling they’re gonna put themselves into a box. Especially if its on a big network as is being reported. 

 

20 minutes ago, EVA said:

I don’t know why you’ve glommed onto this as something preposterous.  Wrestlers are creative people.  Their job is literally to tell stories.  And, in case you haven’t noticed over the years, they frequently have better ideas about what gets over with audiences than a room full of failed sitcom writers.

Of course they’re creative. But being creative wrestlers is a different animal than producing a weekly show that will be expected to draw and maintain viewership. Being good at one doesn’t mean you’re good at the other. 

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4 minutes ago, Thibs said:

That’s the thing, if its mostly wrestling they’re gonna put themselves into a box.

Yeah...?

Culture broadly and programming specifically is increasingly about exploiting a passionate niche audience. You don't put wrestling on TV hoping to draw millions of bored channel flippers, because no one flips channels anymore--people seek out the content they want. The reason a network might want a wrestling show is because they think wrestling fans will want to watch it. Maybe they're right about that and maybe they're wrong, but that's the gambit.

I really don't understand the alternative viewpoint here. If they wanted a variety hour or late night talk show, they'd do that instead.

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40 minutes ago, EVA said:

...failed sitcom writers.

 

35 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

How much Khan money would it take to get Larry David? 

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Larry David is a genius.

However, AEW would fail if Larry was a writer. Not enough Jews for him to work with.

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Hell, even with the Russo time in WWF, it was still just three or four guys laying out everything. Right now they have Matt, Nick, Cody and Tony.  Sit around a pool and write damnit.

When did WWE start having the full writers room thing? 

I mean pro wrestling has succeeded for a century with a booker running things.

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26 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

Yeah...?

Culture broadly and programming specifically is increasingly about exploiting a passionate niche audience. You don't put wrestling on TV hoping to draw millions of bored channel flippers, because no one flips channels anymore--people seek out the content they want. The reason a network might want a wrestling show is because they think wrestling fans will want to watch it. Maybe they're right about that and maybe they're wrong, but that's the gambit.

I really don't understand the alternative viewpoint here. If they wanted a variety hour or late night talk show, they'd do that instead.

I don’t think anyone is calling for a variety show or an attitude era talk heavy show. 

But there’s a difference between a show that’s mostly matches and a show that has great wrestling but also has a story thread where things actually progress from beginning to end. 

I think the latter is what will bring them the largest audience possible. Do you disagree?

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7 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Hell, even with the Russo time in WWF, it was still just three or four guys laying out everything. Right now they have Matt, Nick, Cody and Tony.  Sit around a pool and write damnit.

When did WWE start having the full writers room thing? 

I mean pro wrestling has succeeded for a century with a booker running things.

Oh I definitely don’t want a room full of Hollywood writers. No thanks.

Ideally you’d have one or two TV people that understand wrestling working with these guys to mold their vision into an optimal TV format. Having hooks going in and out of commercial, having a story thread that starts at the top of the show and progresses throughout, things like that.

Why can’t you have that along with the awesome wrestling that these guys are capable of putting on?

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13 minutes ago, Thibs said:

I don’t think anyone is calling for a variety show or an attitude era talk heavy show. 

But there’s a difference between a show that’s mostly matches and a show that has great wrestling but also has a story thread where things actually progress from beginning to end. 

I think the latter is what will bring them the largest audience possible. Do you disagree?

No, and I don’t think anyone does. But you’re suggesting a false dichotomy between match time and narrative progress, when in fact wrestling is the prime driver of story in wrestling. Because it’s wrestling. You need the talking bits and the skits, of course. But you don’t need TV writers for that. 

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7 minutes ago, Thibs said:

Oh I definitely don’t want a room full of Hollywood writers. No thanks.

Ideally you’d have one or two TV people that understand wrestling working with these guys to mold their vision into an optimal TV format. Having hooks going in and out of commercial, having a story thread that starts at the top of the show and progresses throughout, things like that.

Why can’t you have that along with the awesome wrestling that these guys are capable of putting on?

So here's the thing, until they get a TV show, you're not going to hear much about what you're really trying to get at. To keep the show running smoothly they'll eventually need to hire a TV producer. No one is saying they aren't or won't. They'll need to. You can't have a show without it because Tony, Cody, the Bucks, Billy Gunn, or Daniels don't have the experience of running a production truck or keeping a production on track. That doesn't mean that whoever they hire for that needs to have some role with creative.

I think that's where the conversation is getting muddied. Creative =/= production. The vision of the product can remain with the Elite, but where you run into problems is when you have dumb fucks like Kevin Dunn throwing around their weight because they don't like someone's accent or because someone is fat.

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2 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

And in the same interview Cody said they wouldn't have writers he was talking about long form storytelling.

Right, exactly, and you don't need fucking "tv people" for that. TV people are production folks who understand the process of putting on and airing a TV show or even taking those stories from Cody, the Bucks, or whoever and putting that into a show format and saying, ok, this is what we have time for so for this story we only have this much time and then we'll have to break for commercial, this after match stuff can't go on longer than (insert time here) because we're going to cut into our big segment at the end of the night.

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24 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Hell, even with the Russo time in WWF, it was still just three or four guys laying out everything. Right now they have Matt, Nick, Cody and Tony.  Sit around a pool and write damnit.

When did WWE start having the full writers room thing? 

I mean pro wrestling has succeeded for a century with a booker running things.

I'm pretty sure the full writers room thing started when Steph got control of creative. 

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9 minutes ago, Craig H said:

So here's the thing, until they get a TV show, you're not going to hear much about what you're really trying to get at. To keep the show running smoothly they'll eventually need to hire a TV producer. No one is saying they aren't or won't. They'll need to. You can't have a show without it because Tony, Cody, the Bucks, Billy Gunn, or Daniels don't have the experience of running a production truck or keeping a production on track. That doesn't mean that whoever they hire for that needs to have some role with creative.

I think that's where the conversation is getting muddied. Creative =/= production. The vision of the product can remain with the Elite, but where you run into problems is when you have dumb fucks like Kevin Dunn throwing around their weight because they don't like someone's accent or because someone is fat.

And those are great points. Hell, I wouldn’t completely hate bringing in Bischoff in an executive producer role since he’s a whiz with that stuff and has the same opinion on overscripting. 

The problem is the baggage he comes with. 

But I agree for the most part. They don’t need to be in creative per se but they should work with creative, adding the bells and whistles that make a TV show compelling.

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Furthermore, how many TV people wrote for all of the WWF/WWE or WCW angles back in the day? You had Vince, Bruce, and Pat and maybe someone else sitting around Vince's pool booking the product through a period of time. None of those guys are TV people. Even when Russo came in, again you had a small team of people. Russo wasn't a TV guy. Furthermore, during the TV shoots, you had Russo or Bruce or others serving to produce segments. Again, those aren't tv people and you don't need tv people for that stuff.

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4 minutes ago, Hail Sabin said:

I'm pretty sure the full writers room thing started when Steph got control of creative. 

I think that's about right. That's when they also looked for TV writers, preferably without wrestling experience, which when you look back is fucking incredible. That changed over time and now they want people with knowledge of the product, but it's incredible that you had people who had no understanding of wrestling scripting shit. This was also around the time where Dunn and later Johnny Ace pushed their vision of filling out the roster with people who looked like models, in ring experience be damned. It's amazing the product survived.

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2 hours ago, Beech27 said:

Culture broadly and programming specifically is increasingly about exploiting a passionate niche audience.

So many people miss this about the current TV landscape. Just because Bezos is willing to piss away millions to find his GOT, doesn't mean that's where the industry as a whole is moving. 

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Gedo took influences from 80's Memphis his favorite promotion, funneled it through the philosophy set by Inoki and in the process his booking took New Japan out of the darkness into new heights. I'm just saying have a vision, create a formula and stick to it. Cody and Bucks seem to have a vision lets see if they can book compelling television.

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