David

Boy, that was quite the "f*** you" to the people who bought Survivor Series.

It's from the Key Performance Indicators that were released on WWE's corporate site this week (http://ir.corporate.wwe.com/Cache/1500066545.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&fid=1500066545&T=&iid=4121687). Comparing this KPI to last month's, Survivor Series had 33k domestic buys and 70k international buys. Based on how you calculate it, the total number of buys is either 103k or 104k. Hell in a Cell had 21k domestic buys and 56k international buys. At this point, it's pretty clear that a certain number of people are not going to get the Network and are going to continue to buy the PPVs.

This is a very interesting piece of news about the WWE Network and WrestleMania in this week's Observer that isn't getting a lot of attention: "Another point [with regards to this year's WrestleMania] is that even though the company claimed record viewership by adding up worldwide PPVs (690,000) and network subscribers (667,000) and getting 1,357,000, there were actually fewer people watching, even with the lower price, than two years earlier at full price. We don’t have figures but there were far less than 667,000 homes actually watching WrestleMania on the network and one person who did know said that there were more homes, and probably a lot more people, watching in 2012. First off, there were the network subscribers who attended live who would have been counted in 2014 figures whereas in other years they wouldn’t be counted (although in fairness, many of them attending live may have ordered the replay in 2012). You also have the network subscribers who still ordered on PPV, not trusting the technology or they didn’t have the technology to watch it on their TVs and had friends over, so those homes are also counted twice in 2014. Even if that wasn’t the case, when you decrease the price point that much, even if the number was the highest, it’s not a fair comparison."

A few people on the F4W board claim they are still able to access the WWE Network, even though their subscriptions expired. Has this happened to anyone here?

Right now, Lesnar is not advertised for Night of Champions on WWE.com and the Bridgestone Arena's website, though he is advertised for the last Raw before NOC. Is it possible this could mean something, or is it probably just outdated advertising?

WWE reduced the price for a one month subscription from $20 to $13 (http://www.wwe.com/wwenetwork). I hope WWE raises the price for the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania. I don't like the idea of someone being able to watch the Big 3 shows for just $39 per year.

Dave didn't say anything about them in the Observer.

Was there anything in particular that really stood out?

I'm having trouble understanding how Simpsons World and the WWE Network are comparable. The WWE Network is a service that is completely unrelated to a pay tv subscription and must be bought separately, while Simpsons World is directly connected to a pay tv subscription and doesn't require a separate purchase. As long as Simpsons World has all of the episodes (and I don't see why FXX would lie about something like that), and it's easy enough to find a particular episode, I don't understand why people would complain about it. It's about providing more value to pay tv subscribers, not about trying to get casual fans of the Simpsons to pay for greater access to old episodes.

I first saw it in Dave's recap: "There will be massive cost cutting internally. These costs will save the company $10 million this year and $30 million in 2015." Edit: Didn't see Sek's post.

From Dave's recap: "The cutbacks are so significant that they now feel they can break even on 500,000 subscribers in 2015 as opposed to 1.4 million subscribers and at 1.5 million subscribers they will have OIBDA of $100 million to $120 million, which is more than they had pre-network." I haven't looked at the math yet, but that seems a bit suspicious.

128,000 subscribers figured out how to cancel? That's pretty scary.

Did Dave and Bryan give any new info on the show they just did?

What did Bix and Bryan say about it on WOL?

Including time codes is a great idea. Thanks for suggesting it. On a side note, what is the fastest free way to transcribe audio? So far, it's taking me a while to do it, and I'm trying to figure out if there's a better method.

Later this week, I'm planning on starting a new feature on WrestlingObserver.com. In it, I'm going to go through the mailbag portions of Observer Radio and transcribe the questions. My hope is that it will lead to fewer repeat questions (since people can check if it has already been asked) and make research for stuff like that much easier. Before I send it to the site, I would like to get your thoughts about it: - Should I transcribe the entire response, or should I edit out unnecessary stuff (like whenever Dave says "you know")? - Should I include questions about MMA? - Should I include questions that are clearly outdated? Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated.

You are correct, goodhelmet. This is what Dave said in the Observer back in June: "Spike has had other people in wrestling pitch to them, but not Jeff Jarrett, whose deal in exiting TNA included an agreement he wouldn’t go on Spike."

From the Observer: "The WWE has purchased positioning on a transponder on a c-band satellite, which is what cable networks use to send their signals, but for the WWE Network. The network is on the same transponder with Bloomberg and Reelz. Networks usually share transponders to share costs, but this means they are paying a significant amount of money to transport a signal that would be normally used by cable and satellite companies to bring in a station. It opened a lot of speculation but WWE sources say its not significant of anything." If the network is still going to be online-only, what is the point of paying for this?

Going by the schedule, it looks like Raw's post show has been cancelled. Considering the fact that they already have the panel at the studio for the preshow, would a show like that actually be expensive?

On today's Observer Radio, Alvarez said he doesn't expect Bryan will give up the title.

Cageside Seats' Rumor Roundup section really should consistently cite sources when listing stuff like this. For what it's worth, I never heard Alvarez say anything about plans for Bryan to forfeit the title on any of his radio shows.

This is the study: http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/excited-about-march-madness-then-you-could-be-one-of-the-most-politically-moderate-sports-fans-20130318

I don't think it's that strange. I can only speak for myself, but I would rather watch a program on cable than one on the Internet (even though I can watch streaming video on my TV).

Considering the fact that they're no longer trying to sell PPVs, I'm not really sure it makes sense financially. Plus, having him wrestle more matches per year just dilutes him even more.

Warning from Dave in today's daily update about the WrestleMania live stream: To give you even more confidence, MLB.TV has had all sorts of problems this week, with the entire system down off and on the past few days and problems on a number of devices when it has been up. And even more, since MLBAM is doing the technical work for the WWE Network, it was noted in a Deadspin article that several former MLB.tv employees are now working in the umpire's replay wing, which may have something to do with a lack of resources toward fixing the streaming issues.