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AEW Dynamite - 12/23/2020


Dolfan in NYC

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Unpopular take incoming...

 

Despite the playoffs delaying AEW, the show still finished higher than NXT and was, I don't have last weeks numbers around to reference, but sorta close to what they were last week even though they were pre taped and running later than the usual time slot 

One can argue they should try and capture the interest of casuals to grow the audience but I figure, and here's where I'm completely off the rails, maybe just focus on retaining the audience you have.

This weeks numbers vs last weeks numbers would holder greater interest for me versus the opinions of a vocal group on one social media platform. What's next, we look at Tumblr or Instagram or reddit for their takes on a segment? Now we fantasy book for Wreddit, and maybe the week after we focus how to engage the TikTok audience?

 

Again this is where I'm sure I'm wrong, but maybe just give your weekly audience compelling stories and characters to keep coming back. Call me old fashioned, and anyone with surveys and polling can dismantle my next take, but I think growing the audience by word of mouth still works versus counting on casual viewers flipping channels/not immediately changing the channel to engage and grow ratings.

One group of Twitter posts being used to gauge interest is kinda like when two friends are debating a movie or something and one person says, "Well yeah but all my friends hated it." I mean, okay im sure that small sample group is going to be representative of the entirety of consumers watching and/or reading whatever the subject of the debate is. But if one persons friends are intended to be the measuring stick for whats good and what isn't, someone please explain the "box office success" of the Bayformers movies ? 

 

/Shitty take finished. 

 

Happy holidays all. 

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30 minutes ago, Hayabusa said:

Unpopular take incoming...

 

Despite the playoffs delaying AEW, the show still finished higher than NXT and was, I don't have last weeks numbers around to reference, but sorta close to what they were last week even though they were pre taped and running later than the usual time slot 

One can argue they should try and capture the interest of casuals to grow the audience but I figure, and here's where I'm completely off the rails, maybe just focus on retaining the audience you have.

This weeks numbers vs last weeks numbers would holder greater interest for me versus the opinions of a vocal group on one social media platform. What's next, we look at Tumblr or Instagram or reddit for their takes on a segment? Now we fantasy book for Wreddit, and maybe the week after we focus how to engage the TikTok audience?

 

Again this is where I'm sure I'm wrong, but maybe just give your weekly audience compelling stories and characters to keep coming back. Call me old fashioned, and anyone with surveys and polling can dismantle my next take, but I think growing the audience by word of mouth still works versus counting on casual viewers flipping channels/not immediately changing the channel to engage and grow ratings.

One group of Twitter posts being used to gauge interest is kinda like when two friends are debating a movie or something and one person says, "Well yeah but all my friends hated it." I mean, okay im sure that small sample group is going to be representative of the entirety of consumers watching and/or reading whatever the subject of the debate is. But if one persons friends are intended to be the measuring stick for whats good and what isn't, someone please explain the "box office success" of the Bayformers movies ? 

 

/Shitty take finished. 

 

Happy holidays all. 

It's not a shit take! I thought it's been a great conversation so far, and people are making great points. I understand that for all intents and purposes, the NBA twitter stuff is totally anecdotal, I'm just saying that if even the smallest correction could hook a few thousand more eyeballs on the next go round, why not? Its not a big enough deal to totally change course on the whole promotion or anything. I myself may have contributed to that perception by overreacting here when I first saw the twitter stuff, but it is what it is I guess.

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What’s going to be funny is when Jericho 100% owns this, comes up with a new catchphrase/nickname from it, has a new t-shirt ready to go next Wednesday, and makes a quick million off people making fun of him.  The GOAT.

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7 hours ago, The Green Meanie said:

I still don't know who Jade Cargill is and/or why should I care.

 

I'm mad I missed a stellar Abadon spot, buuuuuut super excited her title match is next week. Next week's show is looking stacked, and JERICHO IS ON COMMENTARY.

If that was her first time on the mic a while back, has she even had one wrestling match yet anywhere?

She was a collegiate athlete, and she looks like a comic book superhero in real life. So, hopefully she can put it together. But I just don't get why she's been showcased so much on TV thus far.

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2 hours ago, Hayabusa said:

One can argue they should try and capture the interest of casuals to grow the audience but I figure, and here's where I'm completely off the rails, maybe just focus on retaining the audience you have.

If they're looking to only retain the audience they have, why have Shaq on? Why try to do something with Tyson? Why take part in the Christmas Story script reading? Because those are things that suggest they want to reach a new audience.

By my unscientific account, American wrestling has 2.5 million hardcore fans, give or take. Dynamite brings in roughly 40% of those fans every week. Not a bad number at all for a new promotion. But not where they want to eventually be, I can only guess. Not every wrestling fan will watch, of course, for any number of reasons. But that's where building a foundation for new fans comes in.

Twitter last night is a cross-section of a group being introduced to Dynamite (that's my take). Of course AEW shouldn't live or die by what was said. But if they're on their Ps and Qs--and most here say they are--they'll at least look at the comments and include them in their overall analysis for moving their promotion forward. It was an unvarnished take on their show by people who have no bias for or against them. Food for thought, if we will.

Keeping current fans happy is important. But ultimately, every entertainment medium should at least try to bring in new fans. Wrestling as a whole needs to do that.

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10 hours ago, alstein said:

 

I remember a Jericho-Shamrock match, I don't remember it being particularly good.

They may have had a short match on RAW before the PPV? RAW matches were almost never good in '99!

Also, I have a feeling those Jericho and Shamrock pics can soon be used to describe me before and after the Xmas holiday! The Shamrock one being the "before " ,  obviously ! 

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Also, I'm not sure any amount of working out or supplements are going to fix the damage that's been done to Jericho's deflated chest which...what is that? Is that nerve damage or after-effects of past atrophy or surgery or what? Kofi Kingston kind of has it as well.

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15 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

Also, I'm not sure any amount of working out or supplements are going to fix the damage that's been done to Jericho's deflated chest which...what is that? Is that nerve damage or after-effects of past atrophy or surgery or what? Kofi Kingston kind of has it as well.

As well as Scott Steiner. Must be some sort of nerve damage thing. My pecs are also clearly apart from each other, and have been since age 14ish, but it never escalated to the horrific results of those three mentioned. As of yet ...

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10 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

It's also not a cross section that's going to absorb something new. There is an NBA before the fans part. They got what they wanted in a product they trust. Where are the "NBA but looking for something entirely new" fans?

Not really because they just went like right a PLAYOFF game just a few months ago IIRC. Not a season opener. Not just some game. A PLAYOFF GAME. I didn't hear the sky was falling after that.

Everything is bootleg WWE. It's the brand name. The problem also is WWE is also bootleg WWE. No one gives a fuck because WWE fans will watch WWE, and AEW fans will watch AEW. The issue is folks have a severe hard on for growing the audience that AEW has only had for what.... a year and some change? Do they have like some deadline I don't know about where if they don't reach 1.5 million avg they have to start over like a Nintendo game? It's going to take AWHILE. If they are still at this point 3-4 hell five years from now, all this would be valid. But's it not valid cause the wrestling world doesn't reset every 365 days. Or 30 days or 60 days. They are in this for the long run. You better strap in cause it's going be a long ride.

 

It's hilarious to me people are so bothered by this. I got my own problems with Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal etc, but at the same time, I don't follow what they do. You know how I know what folks do in pro wrestling? You guys repost here in an angry rage. Otherwise, I would have NO CLUE what these people are up to. The Ryker thing is different cause that was actual NEWS news on F4WOnline. I don't look at what they do on social media.

Moreover, I fail to see the connection between hardcore wrestling fans being mad at people and casual folks roasting people as they did not turn the channel after the game is over. This sounds to me like venting.

 

The connection is that you didn't see a lot of pushback from AEW fans.  A few months ago before Jericho crossed the event horizon of dumbassery, foks would have clapped back.    Now folks are like, yeah , he's fat and I don't really care about that asshole anymore, give me more Hangman.

 

I really do believe AEW+NJPW fans (they hate being lumped together, esp the NJPW fans, AEW fans are more cool with it) tend to learn a particular way politically.  I judge this by the crowds I've been in, and how it compared to other crowds I've been in.  CHIKARA crowds also fell into the same category.

 

As for the NBA crowd, I wonder if Top Flight and the Acclaimed being showcased was an attempt to appeal to some of the NBA fanbase.  Top Flight deserves it, as they are AEW's best tag prospects, and the Acclaimed were made to look really good by the Bucks (and I think they have potential).

Jericho/Hager were for those NBA fans who were lapsed WWE fans, as was Miro I suppose.   I think it was a smartly booked show for what they were going for- even if the odds of success weren't that low.  Maybe they got 1,000 folks or so to give it another shot, that's 1,000 they didn't have before, and if they make 100 fans out of it, 100 new fans beats just preaching to the choir, and they didn't insult their audience at all in the process.

 

As for Spears, I suspect he's going to part of an angle on Impact now- he was removed from AEW's roster page.  He's definitely not the guy I'd be sending over (I'd be sending over Sonny/Janela, Private Party, and other guys who need the work)

 

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15 hours ago, Jiji said:

I haven't watched yet but they really should've had a brief Shaq pre taped segment in the can for this and then transitioned to something like Hangmin Adam or whomever else, right? Don't think it works too much anyway as yeah wrestling is very unlikely to ever be anything more than a niche form of entertainment moving forward but sometimes the silliness is more palatable once slowly phased in and Shaq would've been the perfect transition. 

According to Meltzer, so take it for what it's worth, they can only use Shaq when he's available, such as his segment a couple weeks ago. He was available for that at the time, so that's why it was on that show. So I guess he wasn't available to film a segment for tonight.

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16 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Thank you.

And yeah that Jericho vs. Shamrock photo comparison is pretty much Vodka vs. PEDs

Hate to still be harping on this (well , no, because then I just wouldn't ) subject, but I only poison myself with what Jericho uses, but still manage to look more like Shamrock  (not LIKE that but closer to that than like Jericho).

Still, people need to look at what both guys looked like in their primes, so you can see there was always quite a difference between them , so it's not fair to current  (or any Jericho ).

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1 hour ago, Shartnado said:

Hate to still be harping on this (well , no, because then I just wouldn't ) subject, but I only poison myself with what Jericho uses, but still manage to look more like Shamrock  (not LIKE that but closer to that than like Jericho).

Still, people need to look at what both guys looked like in their primes, so you can see there was always quite a difference between them , so it's not fair to current  (or any Jericho ).

Be careful you don't tear your huge, ripped, Shamrock-esque latissimus dorsi muscles there, patting yourself on the back like that ?

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46 minutes ago, El Gran Gordi said:

Be careful you don't tear your huge, ripped, Shamrock-esque latissimus dorsi muscles there, patting yourself on the back like that ?

Luckily, my arms don't bend far enough anymore , for such a tear to happen when I do so  (and yeah, I do) but I promise to be careful with all the patting! Hate to spend rest of the holidays in the hospital because of it!

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8 hours ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

If they're looking to only retain the audience they have, why have Shaq on? Why try to do something with Tyson? Why take part in the Christmas Story script reading? Because those are things that suggest they want to reach a new audience.

By my unscientific account, American wrestling has 2.5 million hardcore fans, give or take. Dynamite brings in roughly 40% of those fans every week. Not a bad number at all for a new promotion. But not where they want to eventually be, I can only guess. Not every wrestling fan will watch, of course, for any number of reasons. But that's where building a foundation for new fans comes in.

Twitter last night is a cross-section of a group being introduced to Dynamite (that's my take). Of course AEW shouldn't live or die by what was said. But if they're on their Ps and Qs--and most here say they are--they'll at least look at the comments and include them in their overall analysis for moving their promotion forward. It was an unvarnished take on their show by people who have no bias for or against them. Food for thought, if we will.

Keeping current fans happy is important. But ultimately, every entertainment medium should at least try to bring in new fans. Wrestling as a whole needs to do that.

Why bring them on? Definitely asking the wrong guy. I stopped following the show weekly when the drama in the weekly threads was more compelling than the wrestling. I barely catch an episode except for maybe once a month ? 

As for where they want to be, since everyone keeps quoting the ever important demo, they seem happy as they're well above what they expected (can't find the Tony tweet at the moment but he's brought up the demo about as often as Jericho and that one nasally guy in the clip that Natural posted about two or three weeks back. By their own tweets, which like ElSavajeLoco was saying, I'm only aware of their tweets since they get posted here, but by their own tweets they're well above where they wanted much less expected to be

If we're looking at Twitter numbers, what's the next step? How many Cameos they did? Twitch viewers? Are we expecting some internal shakeup if they don't move the needle on Facebook live, or do we get new evp's if they're not trending and getting reposted on Instagram? I still don't see how the feedback on one social media platform is supposed to be indicative of any measure of what's working or not working? They retained the majority of the audience from last week, and that's running a pre-taped show outside of the usual time slot. 

No disagreement, but the weekly "the sky is falling because" just feels like its spinning in circles with no progress as we wait on live crowds to come back. "AEW should focus on a small group of NBA fans on Twitter" feels like the weirdest X-Files monster of the week to be trotted out in some time, but I wouldn't actually remember what the last one was since the threads are more entertaining imo

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16 hours ago, J.T. said:

The Acclaimed finally showed up for a tag-team main event. 

Max Caster spat a little fire on BuckHunt.  I was mildly impressed.

When people say Caster is just doing Cena-light, I'm thinking they don't remember Cena being completely off-beat and having the worst cadence. He sounded like a dude doing an impersonation of a rapper, wheras Caster sounds like an actual rapper (albeit a pretty lame one). 

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Acclaimed are great. Infinitely more fun than most of the vanilla, forgettable teams w/ zero individualism/charisma. Little bit of the dorky Edge & Christian vibe to them -- take themselves a lot less seriously than the Cena-rapper schtick & more fun to it. Super high ceiling to those dudes (on the subject of too many convoluted / flippy finishers, also nice to see them with the old HBK/Macho elbow from the top).

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1 hour ago, christopher.annino said:

When people say Caster is just doing Cena-light, I'm thinking they don't remember Cena being completely off-beat and having the worst cadence. He sounded like a dude doing an impersonation of a rapper, wheras Caster sounds like an actual rapper (albeit a pretty lame one). 

Caster is marginally better with scripted lyrics.  When he works CWFH, he freestyles as he approaches the ring and it sounds really bad.

I kinda give Cena a pass since I think the Doctor of Thuganomics gimmick was supposed to be blatant cultural appropriation and once Bumpy Knuckles and Truejoi started coaching him, Cena got better on the mic.

Edited by J.T.
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11 hours ago, TheVileOne said:

Also, I'm not sure any amount of working out or supplements are going to fix the damage that's been done to Jericho's deflated chest which...what is that? Is that nerve damage or after-effects of past atrophy or surgery or what? Kofi Kingston kind of has it as well.

Kofi was born like that, it's some sort of medical condition. Or at least that's what I was told on here one time. 

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10 hours ago, alstein said:

 

The connection is that you didn't see a lot of pushback from AEW fans.  A few months ago before Jericho crossed the event horizon of dumbassery, foks would have clapped back.    Now folks are like, yeah , he's fat and I don't really care about that asshole anymore, give me more Hangman.

These are my exact emotions. A year ago I would have been all "Jericho is a fat fuck but he's OUR fat fuck! Back off!"
These days its "Oh the COVID guy? Yeah don't know him..."

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On 12/24/2020 at 10:58 AM, Elsalvajeloco said:

I would be more shocked that this person doesn't understand the amount of time that has passed. If you were born in late 97/early 98, you are old enough to have voted in not one but TWO presidential elections. A person who was born the last time Jericho was cruiserweight champion has now graduated with a bachelor's degree.

I wouldn't be so sure of their academic outcome nowadays.

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10 hours ago, Hayabusa said:

If we're looking at Twitter numbers, what's the next step? How many Cameos they did? Twitch viewers? Are we expecting some internal shakeup if they don't move the needle on Facebook live, or do we get new evp's if they're not trending and getting reposted on Instagram? I still don't see how the feedback on one social media platform is supposed to be indicative of any measure of what's working or not working?

This is a bad take. It's a bad take in the sense that you seem to not understand why growing an audience is important. So what, market to only the people who watch already? Never grow? Never get bigger? Never make more money? The current audience is finite. Even if you keep 100% of the current audience for the next 50 years, they'll eventually move on / die out / pass away / ect. We were all non-fans at a point in our life. We checked it out a show, liked it, and got hooked. That's just how it works. If you don't try and reach for more than you already have, you'll never replenish the ones that leave.

The (conventional) TV consuming universe in The United States is roughly 120 million-ish. AEW doesn't even capture a full 1% of the possible viewers. Your take is basically saying it's futile to make steps to get any of the other 99% to try it out (so some of them can get hooked like we did). Or that analyzing what people who sampled did or didn't like is a waste. The NBA TV audience is larger than the Pro Wrestling audience. It's not wrong of people in here just making observations on what worked with them and what didn't.
 

17 hours ago, Shartnado said:

As well as Scott Steiner. Must be some sort of nerve damage thing. My pecs are also clearly apart from each other, and have been since age 14ish, but it never escalated to the horrific results of those three mentioned. As of yet ...

I'm not a physical therapist so this is just a Google-Fu medical diagnosis. But it sounds like when you tear the pec muscle off of the bone, if you don't have surgery to reattach it, you get the Jericho / Undertaker / Scott Steiner chest. If you have the surgery to reattach it, it can heal. But if you don't, the center of your chest basically atrophies and the muscle tissue dies. Certain muscle injuries don't heal without surgery. And wrestlers, besides being tough guys, don't want to have to take a year to rehab. Because a year of rehab means a year of only making your downside guarantee and not any bigger payoffs.

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Gotta remember this isn't the 90s, so many more options have come, and I suspect only about half of AEW's folks watch it on TV, the other half stream it- either from FITE or the good ship Reddit.  Much of AEW's potential audience has already cut the cord.

 

 

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