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Thanks again for answering my question, but I have to follow-up on something you said about seasonal programming. You said "No, I wouldn’t. TV revenue is by far their highest source of OIBDA. Producing less TV means less money to the company." I get your reasoning and of course seasonal programming wouldn't guarantee a better product, but I can't agree with your argument that less TV means less money for WWE. It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that you are forgetting the ratings. I obviously don't know what the deal between WWE and the USA network says, but the companies that buy the advertising spots obviously want as many people to watch their commercials as possible. I know that those contracts can include the rule that the money the advertisers gave upfront to the network has to be returned if a certain number of people aren't reached. As I said I don't know exactly how USA sells their advertising spots, but they could demand much more money if they had better ratings. Such low ratings as last week with less than 2.7 million people watching RAW won't make advertisers happy. And there has to be a reason why the ratings are down. So less TV doesn't necessarily mean less money to the company. It could be quite the opposite. Less TV would lower the costs for WWE, could increase the quality and make the product more attractive to viewers and advertisers, which means more money.
OK, since you asked, you are wrong, for a few reasons. For one thing, almost every show on TV sees its TV ratings go DOWN season to season. A season ends and people move on to other things and shows, and some don’t come back. But beyond that, WWE is paid to produce 52 episodes of both shows per year. If you cut out say 13 weeks, they are down to 39 shows. They would, in theory, need to add 25% to their current viewership to get back to even from an ad perspective. Maybe NBC Universal shares that, maybe they don’t. But even if they do, your theory is predicated on WWE fixing the current creative process, which will not happy as Vince McMahon is happy with it, AND the shows not only not losing viewership, but increasing it by 25%. The odds of those things happening are slim at best. There’s one more thing to consider, part of the reason USA pays what they do is to garner the weekly ratings that WWE brings in. It helps them in the battle to become the top rated cable network. They pay what they do for a weekly show.
Since they did AJ vs. Balor at TLC and with Survivor series coming up, what do you think of this. They do a rematch at Survivor Series. It could be AJ vs Balor (not the demon) with AJ winning to set up a rematch at say Royal Rumble. There they could go to a draw to setup a rematch at Wrestlemania. In between they could build both by having them winning in competitive matches, plus the occasional promo, etc.
I would love to see them wrestle and all but since they had Kane destroy Finn, and got shots in on AJ as well, on Raw last week, the company took a lot of the spark out of the program between them. Sacrificing those guys left a bad taste in my mouth so I would rather see them get built back up before being put in epic series like that.
So since WWE likes to rehash and bring back old ideas and stables, what about creating a new SST (Samoan Swat Team)? It could feature The Usos, Nia Jax, Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe., and if need be they could add The Rock in a pinch.What are your thoughts on that?
Personally, I loathe bringing back old ideas. I am a fan of creating the next big thing, not regurgitate something from the past. As for WWE, they also tend to not like banding groups together and they see Roman as THE guy, so I don’t see them doing it either.
What is USA Today Sports Digital Properties? I see the banner at the top of your main page. Has this site been sold to USA Today?
No, we are still independently owned (by me). We are part of the USA Today ad network.
I couldn't help but notice when Big Cass had his knee injury on RAW, that he said “F***” about 5 times in a row, and now I'm watching Randy Orton VS Sami Zayn and Sami just yelled "Oh sh!t". It was caught in time and edited out, but still stands obvious. So my question is, Do WWE wrestlers get fined when they swear on live television?
It depends. Obviously, they aren’t supposed to do it but in the case of Cass, for example, that would be really cold. The man just suffered a serious injury, and he knew it. If they fined him then I just think it would be wrong.
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