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WWE TV Rights Deal


cheapshot

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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.

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Another thing to consider... isn't the pressure for RAW to be 3 hours on the USA side? If so, I can see RAW going back to 2 hours on another network.

 

I think USA pressed them to add the 3rd hour, but USA also paid them to add the 3rd hour. I'd think at this point they're pretty comfortable with the extra coin that hour produces.

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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.

 

I don't watch the show, but I imagine (unlike the Vick angle) that there is a point and a reason for it on the show.

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Do you think some of this is because a kid watching wrestling might see it as real while a kid watching The Walking Dead would know it was a show? Or at least the likely false notion of that?

 

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/

 

The Walking Dead (AMC)

7.95 million persons 12-34

16.48 million viewers overall

Ranked #1 among 50 most popular primetime entertainment series of 2013 among persons 12-34

 

 

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.

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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.

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So from the WON this morning, it looks like they're talking to Spike TV about a return, which means Viacom backed up that big ol' truck of money, it seems.

 

That they're talking to Viacom was talked about earlier in the thread, along with everyone else they're allegedly talking about. This was all out there in the public last week:

 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-03-07/wwe-expects-new-cable-tv-deal-by-early-may-cfo-barrios-says

 

I don't think Dave is saying it's a done deal.

 

What we hashed around here in the thread is that a Viacom deal kind of only fits SD also being on Spike in addition to Raw: there doesn't looke to be a good natural fit for SD elsewhere in the Viacom suite of networks. Not that it stopped the WWE in the past, such as tossing SD onto SyFy in the Comcast NBCU slew of channels, which was pretty kooky.

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