JNLister

IIRC, the Owen-Bret match on WrestleMania rewind had a few different angles (including the overhead shots from the 'ladder cam'), but nothing majorly different. They had a "film version" of the first Rock-Cena on their DVD as well with different angles. Hogan-Andre was different though as it was one static angle. It was fascinating to see how it looked to the crowd, though the lengthy bearhug is really really really long when you don't have camera cuts or Ventura talking to break it up.

Had an idea for a very cheap way to add "fresh" programming. On the WWE History DVD, they have an extra of Hogan-Andre from Silverdome but it's entirely from the hard camera and with no commentary, so it's the same effect as watching it in person. I very much enjoyed watching it this way just for the novelty and the different take on a match you've seen dozens of times and become familiar with the camera shots and commentary lines. I'd love to see them do a series of this with other famous WWE matches.

Been thinking about the whole "upload Raws day by day/upload random episodes/upload a batch at a time/change policy for no reason" along with the "we can't upload anything before the 6 months is up or people won't resubscribe/we must upload stuff before the 6 months is up or people won't resubscribe" debate and it got me thinking there's a basic distinction which the people running the network may be missing: I don't literally want to watch every Raw/Nitro. I do want to be able to watch any Raw/Nitro. It's the same story with the "we uploaded a few World Class shows, nobody watched them." For me at least, the whole selling point of the network library is that it's not like Classics on Demand where you're paying for a specific batch of content each month. It's that you're subscribing to a library that means you can think of a match and then watch it straight away. In other words, it's YouTube but legal, complete and good quality. Despite all the talk at launch, it still feels like they are running it from the mindset of a channel where they decide what you watch, and they see the VOD library as a glorified version of a DVD extra.

IIRC, what Otani'sjacket is talking about here is a couple of prints that were produced by ITV and sent to a foreign network (or may even have been for use as inflight entertainment somewhere) and wound up on eBay. Not sure what became of them.

Still baffled as to why a Monday Night Wars documentary debuts at 4pm on Tuesday. One problem is they covered a couple of possible episodes (women, hardcore) quite comprehensively in the Attitude era episode (which you can add to the list of aired/confirmed.) In no particular order (and with no suggestion I approve of these ideas) 6) Austin 7) Austin vs McMahon 8) Rock 9) USA vs Canada 10) Goldberg 11) Cruiserweights 12) Celebrities in matches 13) Women wrestling (which would be very hard to stretch out to an hour) 14) Weird venues (Domes, going overseas, Spring Break) 15) ECW talent appearing on Mondays/Jumping to the big two ~ 19) Russo's shit 20) Final Nitro What's more interesting/frustrating is just how much of this is retreads of DVDs they've already done. The first five episodes are pretty much: 1) An extended version of the opening section of the Monday Night Wars DVD 2) The NWO DVD 3) The Attitude Era DVD (which had a one-hour documentary so it's almost totally redundant) 4) An hour of DX -- no idea how much overlap that has with the HHH documentary 5) The Mick Foley documentary

I can see the new rule causing more confusion for some voters. Say you've got 11 candidates you think HoF worthy and somebody, lets call him Dick Murdoch, is your 11th best candidate. Do you play it straight and vote for your top 10, or do you pick Murdoch because he's on the chopping board and somebody else in your top 10 is still going to be on the ballot next year if they don't get in?

Kendo Nagasaki vs King Kendo worked OK in England, though the nature of Nagasaki booking meant it was a one-and-done feud.

Seen a theory elsewhere that the modified ones are made for broadcast on the live stream/channel in Canada.

As far as I can work out, the episode guide is: 1) Nitro launches, Luger & Madusa jump 2) NWO helps WCW take lead 3) Vince invents Attitude era and regains lead. 4) Goldberg? 5-20) LOL, look what Russo did.

Mike Sempervive has a thread at the Observer site board where he takes talking points and checks up on them with whoever his contacts within WWE are. In response to various queries about the Network he got back the response: Figures. The same source also noted that most of the more interesting stuff on YouTube and the website is done without going through Vince, but he vets all the original content on the Network.

Meltzer didn't say they are moving to Velocity, he said they've got an offer from Velocity if they want/need to take it. He also stressed that the drop money (and lack of visibility for promotion) would mean TNA as it exists today would be gone. They'd pretty much be ROH mk II.

Cite Roland Barthes -- punch in balls.

So given their library is so well-organised, why did they stop adding chapter marks to the Network uploads after a few weeks, not only making playback harder to use, but making the search tool utterly useless? The limitations of the network are all the more annoying when you know they do have the ability to make it so much better. It really does feel like they quite quickly switched from "make it as awesome as possible to boost subscribers" to "this is all the audience we'll get, let's do as little and as cheaply as possible without running them off." Also, of the 9 missing episodes in the current WCCW run on the Network, I believe 5 aired on Classics on Demand or 24/7.

WWE's Inbox feature on YouTube this week (fan asks questions, wrestlers answer) is about cartoon characters and starts with a clip from Eastern Championship Wrestling TV with Chris Michaels doing a promo and concluding that "we're not a cartoon." I mention that to ask why they've clearly got somebody with the encyclopaedic knowledge or an incredibly detailed database to think of and locate an obscure clip based on one word, yet they can't figure out that you need to show World Class from 1983 in chronological order.

At a guess I'd say broadly chronological, but possibly with some focusing on a topic. Episode 1 went up to the Madusa incident. I find it impossible to speculate about this series without making wildly inappropriate comparisons to The World At War.

Has there ever been a drama or comedy win an Emmy when its writing process begins three days before broadcast, the performers (who aren't trained actors) get the scripts a few hours before broadcast, there's little to no rehearsal, and the script is sometimes rewritten during the broadcast?

Not sure if this is the start of anything, but the new archive 1999 Smackdown uploaded today had chapter marks, the first time I've seen them on new stuff for months. Amusingly the first one I clicked on simply read "Triple H executes Pedigree and wins."

Lance Storm's theory is that they'll have to stick some random Canadian stuff on the VOD or even the live channel to get round the local broadcasting laws on having a minimum percentage of Canadian content because they'll be treated as a TV channel.

They're doing a 30 minute Cena-Lesnar profile tonight, presumably along the lines of UFC Countdown. Unfortunately it's airing on the WWE Network, meaning the only people who'll see it are the ones who've already "bought" SummerSlam.

Believe it or not, I saw Murphy wrestle last year. Obviously very limited, but to be fair he did a good job of disguising the fact that he wasn't leaving his feet.

No, for the moment at least they are keeping the "pay monthly but with six month commitment" option. So there's no benefit to paying up front unless it's as a gift.

I know of several people who've had a payment declined for some reason (insufficient funds; card connected to PayPal account has expired and they didn't add the new one to their account in time) and the moment the payment was declined, WWE cancelled their account,

That's not the case AFAIK. It's a monthly payment, so if you cancel early, you stop paying. (In fact "stop paying" is the way most people are 'cancelling.') You cancel four months in and you've only paid $40 and WWE doesn't get the remaining $20.

It was kinda funny when Vince was banking on the Nevada Athletic Commission saying Tyson couldn't wrestle Austin because of the boxing ban, giving them the out for not doing a match, but Marc Ratner was all "it's wrestling, whatever, do it, we don't care."

FWIW, Dave Meltzer's answer to the $30 million cuts/500k subscribers breakeven is that it certainly doesn't add up on paper. He reckons WWE's revenue drop from 1.4m to 500k would be $86 million and that some of the disparity could be explained by: * Money from the Canada deal * Lower infrastructure costs from serving fewer online customers * Cuts to network programming that aren't included in the main company budget cuts.