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I think it's fitting. The promomtion started out as a vanity plaything for Jeffey's ego. It's transitioned over the years to playing to the ego of Kurt, Dixie, Hogan and Eric at various times along with people beneath them. Perfect.

I'm in the middle because I don't know if it will die. I'm sure we can find stuff they were heavy handed about that the fans never really got onto (say Batista's first match push towards the world title vs Trip). But... Rocky's 1st Babyface IC Push = Heavy Handed = Bombed (Die Rocky Die!) Rock's 1st Heel Push with NOD = "felt" Organic = Got Over Quite Well Rock's Increased Heel Push = certainly Heavy Handed but "felt' like a next level of NOD Push so semi-organic = Got Over Huge I'm not sold that the middle one "just happened" and the WWF was as clueless about it as they were the initial Stone Cold push. But it really "felt" mush more organic in WWF World than the first. Simmons was the front man of the NOD, and perhaps Rock breaking out as a star behind that front man helped make it feel organic, if that makes sense. Of course the third was was full on WWF push to the moon heavy handed if we were to go back and chart it. Mr. McMahon helped him. Stone Cold got screwed over. They suddenly found they had major magic in Face Foley opposite Rock, and then from Eric being a dick about Foley winning the title on Raw. We're all jaded bastards and could see the wheels grinding away if we re-watched 1998-99 now... but we also would probably also see how well the various steps were done, and how the crowd "come along" rather than "being led", to a degree that the crowd probably thought they were leading the dance in some ways. * * * * * I'm not sure they needed to be so obviously heavy handed with Bryan to use Plants. There were enuogh Bryan Fans in the building, and WWE Production should have been able to get close up and group shots of those fans. That's great in the sense that they go up on the TitanTron, get their 15 minutes of Fame, get other Bryan Fans in the building more active tying to get on camera, which makes Bryan Fans at the next Raw taping all fired up to get on the camera as well. *That* is manipulating the fans without them really knowing they're being manipulated. On the other hand, this is pro wrestling. It's always been pretty heavy handed. There's stuff that I roll my eyes at as being too obviously stupid/goofy/fakey-fake, but the fans base buys it. Sometimes they don't mind getting hit over the head. So... I see both your side and Bix's. It's a positive that the WWE is trying to tap into Bryan Fandom that's going on at the moment, that they recognize it and are trying to get some milage out of it. Was that the perfect way to support it? Don't know. Not sure how it will play.

We do care. One of the major reasons I thought to open this topic was a place to toss all sorts of financial stuff like that from you. The TV deals will get done, and the network has lauched. But there will always be Business/Finance stuff popping up, and it could use a good general thread to toss it into. Then if it turns out to be major, it can be broken out like is done out of the "Comments that don't warrant a thread". So... please keep tossing stuff in here, Chris.

So why did Joe/Kobshi draw such a big ROH crowd and become one of their biggest DVD sellers? Why was the crowd going ape shit over Kobashi being there before the match had even started? And that was only people who could get to New York. There was a definite crossover between people who liked ROH and people who knew about puroresu. I would estimate (based on ROH message boards and the UK shows I was at) that at least 90% of ROH fans had heard of Kobashi, and maybe 40% had seen a match of his if not more. So did the Kobashi vs Joe dvd sell more than the original Ric Flair WWE dvd? More than a Shawn Michaels dvd? Sure, a lot of people who went to the Kobashi-Joe match new about Kobashi. How long had ROH been pimping it?

That happens in every form of life.....you should've seen all the people whining on Twitter how SXSW last weekend was taken over by corporations. They said that last year as well... and the year before... and... Well just an example of how this is old: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/16/sxsw-2011-going-corporate-selling-out * * * * * On the question of Bryan and the WWE co-opting it, I see both points: It's smart for the WWE to try to tap into something that the fans are getting off on. That what we all said they should be doing with Bryan: he's over with a chunk of the fan base, and it's the WWE's job to figure out how to capitalize on and enhance that. On the flip side, the WWE does have a long track record of taking something that is kinda-sorta organic and then over playing it / being clumsy in how they deal with it. We can all recall the Shawn Face Push To The Top in 1996. Shawn was over as a face going back to the prior year when he turned to help his buddy Diesel The Champ. When it came time to push him to the next level to the top, Vince's first impulse was to turn him into a baby kissing babyface. Pehaps not quite literally, but you get the point. The HBK Face that had been doing just fine got kind of unnatural / uncommfortable. Thing tend to work better for the WWF/WWE when they don't try to over step on it. Razor became a Face because the fans thought he was Cool even when he was a Heel. Dittos Jake. Neither became a traditional Face when they turned: for the most part they kept playing the same character, though adjusted their work in the ring to play face a bit more, and adjusted their interplay with the fans a bit. Stone Cold initially got over in the same way: the sumbitch was cool. I think Martin has a point that the Plants might be a bit of an overplay. If the crowd is already going nuts for Bryan, does the WWE really need to go the Plant route? It's nice and all that the WWE gives their blessing and support to Bryan-Love, but... It's a bit heavy handed. Than again, pro wrestling is usually heavy handed.

I doubt a high % of ROH fans really know about 6/3/94. It never came up at any PWG show I went to, and I doubt the PWG and ROH fan base are all that different. Most smart fans in the US are fans of the WWF/WWE, WCW, ECW and/or TNA. Look at guys like SKeith. Despite being an idiot, he is a smart fan. He really isn't a big fan of New Japan, All Japan, etc. There are a thousand people like that for even 1 of us. Probably more. Youtube doesn't change that. John

You're right. I'd mentioned Nick with Viacom earlier, and got self-confused...

I think only a small % of "smart fans" give two shits about Kobashi or anyone in Japan. There have always been more smart fans who only care about the WWF/WWE, WCW or ECW/TNA. For any of us who were on the Usenet or old services like AOL and Prodigy, those of us who like Kenta Kobashi were a tiny minority. One might try to say that the people who posted to rec.sport.pro-wrestling weren't all Smart Fans... but they all were. They all knew it was fake, they all talked about booking on some level, etc. Not saying they were all involved in great conversation, but they were all hardcore smart fans on some level. Even the wave of newbies who popped up after AOL came out with unlimited minutes and the internet blew up. John

That said, there likely are *some* networks where they get worried about that. In fact, if AMC ran SD on Nick, then perhaps there would be some guidelines that are different from what they could with Raw on AMC. But it's also hard to imagine that either AMC or the WWE would be willing to go that route: you don't pay $150M / $200M for the WWE to make it something that it isn't. You pay that money for it to deliver 3M viewers for two hours of SmackDown and 4.5M viewers for Raw across three hours. Also, the Nick thing might be moot. Check out what Nick draws on Friday nights compared to SmackDown: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/03/10/friday-cable-ratings-gold-rush-wins-night-wwe-friday-night-smackdown-nba-basketball-game-of-stones-more/243237 None of those SpongeBob episodes are new. Of Wiki, a new Paw Patrol aired on Friday, but it's unlikely that all of those slots for it were the new episode. Anyway... the point would be Nick does 2M on re-runs that cost them a lot less than SmackDown would. In addition, they probably draw in better advertising money from that stuff than SmackDown given how little people pay to advertising on wrestling. So it would be a strange decision by AMC to run SmackDown on Nick. The whole AMC thing is a strange fit given their size, resources and how the WWE would fit.

It's unlikely: http://www.wetpaint.com/walking-dead/articles/2014-01-03-most-popular-show-young-viewers http://variety.com/gallery/walking-dead-most-popular-cable-shows-among-young-viewers-duck-dynasty/#!2/the-walking-dead-amc/ It's rather huge among the key 18-49 demo as well. It would be interesting to see how it broke down in every age group. Perhaps Raw beats it in the "11 and under" age range, but 12-17 is probably won by TWD. It's freaking huge. :/ I also agree with Kris' comment about Breaking Bad and meth, and good lord did it have some nasty killings on it.

There's "rec" on SBNation comments section, and it tends to invite folks to post reccy things. Part of me likes that some of the best comments turn Green and you can pick them out of a long list of comments. But I've also found that they don't really have a lot to do with signal-to-noise. I've seen sites with good signal-to-noise where the poster didn't really go in for rec'ing stuff for whatever reason, and I've seen sites where all sorts of stuff would get rec'd with at least half of it throw-away jokes rather than good stuff. So... I'm kind of "Eh" about it. I certainly "like" plent of stuff on facebook, as Loss can testify to. But fb is also a different beast than PWO.

Kind of what one would expect out of Buff.

It's pro wrestling, so they don't care. They "corrected" the stuff Trip said about Wade, but in a half ass bullshit way that wasn't even much of a correction. I also doubt the Masked Man really cares that much. He's off in a Scott Keith type of alternative reality. My guess is that if Lowe has an piece with a number of errors that he would be willing to listen, would correct it, and if it were serious enough he'd write a second piece revisiting it. I haven't dealt with Barnwell as much as a number of people here, nor read much of his sports writing before he got to Grantland... so I don't know how he would deal with correcting stuff.

USA and Time Warner only cared about content in a Standards & Practices fashion, not in the sense of highbrow/lowbrow. Which the WWE typically has very few issues living within. They'll do a stupid thing every few years that gets people up at arms, they say they're sorry, and move on. But check out the image here: http://tbivision.com/news/2013/02/the-walking-dead-opener-delivers-best-ever-ratings/38382 As bad at the Trip-Kane-Katie thingy was, I'm not so sure that implied necrophilia is any worse that Flesh Eating Zombies chomping down on humans right on camera. They've also had dog eating, pig eating, blowing heads off, impaling... all sorts of stuff. Unless AMC is far more stupid than we think, it's hard to believe they would be in talks with the WWE with part of their sales pitch being: "By the way... we need you to tone all this shit down if we're going to pay you." Pro Wrestling at this point is a bit like the NFL: everyone knows that they're getting in bed with if they're bidding. Unless it's a really stupid network.

Corny is probably happy to get some money.

Seriously... do you really think that AMC gives a hoot about WWE Creative given (i) it's the WWE so everyone knows what they're getting, and (ii) ZOMBIES~! Just because we're not sitting at the table doesn't mean we have to be dumb. It's akin to people inside the wrestling business saying that folks on this board can't really judge the WWE's business and creative decisions because we're Outsiders rather than Insiders.

What Loss said: NBA playoffs caused pre-emptions and those shows weren't head-to-head. It's like counting the weeks of the Dog Show and the US Open as "wins" for WCW. No one did. John

Their biggest hit, and arguably the biggest hit in the history of cable (not including sports) is a Zombie series. If AMC is seriously chasing the WWE, they know exactly what they're getting (as does everyone) and don't care about creative changes.

Breaking Bad is done and Mad Men has one more season left. When Mad Men finishes, does AMC have anything going for it besides Walking Dead? Yeah, it's a long shot, but stranger things have happened. The TV world is becoming overpopulated with dramas about troubled leading male characters. Maybe AMC doesn't want to bother with another "Cold Winter Sun" and thinks people who like zombies will also like some rasslin'. They have a number of things in the "scripted" pipeline, with three debuting this year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_%28TV_channel%29#Future_programming They have quite a few others in the Developmental stage. Walking Dead of course is a monster. Hell On Wheels is back for a 4th season coming up later this year, but it's largely spinning its wheels in terms of viewers: very good for AMC, but at the level where things get expensive the longer shows go on. It would be surprising if it gets a 5th season if it's ratings hold up to that level, but beyond that... who knows. You want to hit a certain number of shows for syndication value, but that never has looked to be high on AMC's list when looking at shows getting axed in the past. My only thought is that if Vince really thinks he's getting $200M a year, that's a ton of jack for AMC. The Dolan's have a nice little cash cow in AMC, but it's also sitting on a decent amount of debt that they just added another $600M to recently for an international acquisition... there's a pretty decent sized debt service going on. Not saying AMC wouldn't buy it as an anchor for say Monday and Friday (or some other night of the week for SD) primetime. But $200M is a lot for them.

There are also Former Fans. I'm sure there were a lot of people during Disco's "prime" who looked at Disco, WCW at the time and the WWF and thought they were all shit compared to the stuff they watched back when they were regulars. Or they just moved away to other things to entertain themselves, or other things in life, etc. In fact, the largest group of Fans in the country are likely Former Fans.

AMC is pretty funny if Vince is looking for $200M+ a year. Look up the Revenue and Cost of Revenue for the entire company. Dropping that load on Vince would be a major change in how they do business. On the Viacom side, 8+ years is a lifetime in television. ESPN has a piece of the NASCAR package from 1981-2000. They got aced out when NBC and Fox bought the major parts of the package starting in 2001. NASCAR and ESPN were kind of dickish with each other when the package moved. Did it matter long term? Not really: NBC decided it was too rich for them and bowed out in the next package, and ESPN slid back in to have a piece from 2007-2014. Did NBC bowing out matter in the long term? Not really: they bought back into the next package the runs from 2015-2024. "It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business." -Michael Corleone The tricky thing about Viacom is that it's a pretty narrow group of channels: You have the MTV group, which I don't think the WWE wants a part of now. Then you have the Nick group, which also isn't a great fit. Dittos the BET group. Which leaves the Entertainment side: Comedy Central, TV Land, Spike and Epix. Epix doesn't count. TV Land is in a lot of households, but it's a jobber channel often booted to the SD range. I'm pretty sure that I don't have it in HD on TWC, and that appears to be the case with others. Could one see SmackDown on Comedy Central? So is Spike going to double down on wrestling by carrying both Raw and SmackDown? I don't think it's bad for the WWE to have both on one channel, and it probably isn't bad for overall viewership for that network as it would be 5 hours of a pretty sizeable bump in viewers.

Anyway... on the article... I was expecting worse. It would have been nice if they talked about the Netflix-Comcast deal. Other than that, it was largely a fanish piece out of them rather than a quality business piece. It does get across that the WWE Network at its current price is a pretty strong value, and that it has the potential to provide a staggering amount of content. John

So who is the PWO twitter? Will or Loss?

Sort of what Rovert said, if I can read those last two sentences right. ESPN wouldn't buy the WWE: it's Disney. They've made some major purchases over the past decade: 2004 The Muppets Studio 2006 Pixar 2009 Marvel 2012 Lucasfilms In addition to locking in a significant number of sports leagues/conferences well into the next decade. It's a tough time to buy the WWE with the stock price so through the roof... and Vince still alive and unlikely to want to sell it. John

The other elephant in the room is the recent Comcast-Netflix deal. John