Is the empire crumbling before our eyes?

[El-P]

14 hours ago, strobogo said:

Maybe the non WWF/WCW/ECW vault stuff doesn't get as many views. Surely the views it does get and the ads you run on it is more money than you'd get from digitizing it and just storing it somewhere.

No one watched the old stuff on the Network. It's not worth the effort for them. (and yeah, I know, not *literally* no one)
And really now, they are already making completely ridiculous bloodmoney and TV rights, why would they bother for some drops ? 

[Embrodak]

I think there is a cost associated with having material on the server to be streamed. HBO took down a bunch of shows and movies recently, pissing off huge numbers of people in the entertainment industry, because I guess they calculated that it cost them more to have them there than they would actually fetch in subscription revenue.

[JRH]

If The Iron Claw becomes a huge hit I can see a lot of people possibly wanting to see this WCCW stuff for themselves, might as well upload the last few months of it (they've got up through 1988).

[strobogo]

1988 is where their library stops for WCCW. The 1989 on stuff belongs to the Savoldi family.

[El-P]

Late WCCW is probably some of the worst shit I've ever seen. Even late AWA is less depressing.

Hey, more corporate lay off in WWE offices. McKenzie Mitchell being one of the victims. No idea how she fared in NXT, but I remember her being kinda cool in IMPACT, and she sure had the look to get the big WWE contract. I wonder what's next for someone like her though now if she wants to remains in the pro-wrestling landscape. With Renee Paquette & Lexy Nair, AEW has it more than covered with the two best backstage interviews in eons and TNA has Gia Miller, who's really good too.

[JRH]

37 minutes ago, strobogo said:

1988 is where their library stops for WCCW. The 1989 on stuff belongs to the Savoldi family.

Actually, I think they own the whole library now, they have USWA Texas on the Network (inexplicably listed as "Global") and IIRC, USWA Texas was essentially what happened to World Class.

[The Thread Killer]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

 

Late WCCW is probably some of the worst shit I've ever seen. Even late AWA is less depressing.

 

I admittedly never saw late era WCCW. Once David, Mike, and Lance (lol) were gone, Brody was murdered and Kerry got sidelined with that foot injury, I stopped going to the trouble to track down the tapes…they were not easy to come by in Canada and it wasn’t worth the effort.

But the idea that anything could be more depressing than the dying days of the AWA is mind boggling to me.

[Dav'oh]

3 hours ago, JRH said:

If The Iron Claw becomes a huge hit

Not a chance, imho. It doesn't appeal to women, young or old, for starters. Plus, we've all seen the trailers.  There's not even an audience for Young Presidential Hopeful Rock anymore.

[Embrodak]

The Iron Claw has Zac Efron and the guy from The Bear, I think it has a shot.

[Ricky Jackson]

I thought the trailers made it look great. I think it will do well

[Dav'oh]

Over/under US$41.5m (Fighting With My Family's reported takings)?

Having seen various Von Erich documentaries, and as someone more interested in wrestling's past than its present, I don't feel compelled to watch this film. I do hope it has some degree of success and everyone enjoys it.

[SirEdger]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Late WCCW is probably some of the worst shit I've ever seen. Even late AWA is less depressing.

Hey, more corporate lay off in WWE offices. McKenzie Mitchell being one of the victims. No idea how she fared in NXT, but I remember her being kinda cool in IMPACT, and she sure had the look to get the big WWE contract. I wonder what's next for someone like her though now if she wants to remains in the pro-wrestling landscape. With Renee Paquette & Lexy Nair, AEW has it more than covered with the two best backstage interviews in eons and TNA has Gia Miller, who's really good too.

I guess it makes sense now why Kelly Kincaid was doing the interviews in the last couple of weeks. Very surprised they let her go.

[Ricky Jackson]

1 hour ago, Dav'oh said:

Over/under US$41.5m (Fighting With My Family's reported takings)?

Having seen various Von Erich documentaries, and as someone more interested in wrestling's past than its present, I don't feel compelled to watch this film. I do hope it has some degree of success and everyone enjoys it.

I see its budget listed as $15.9m, which is pretty low these days. I have no idea what kind of release it will get, but it doesn't have to set the world on fire to be successful with that kind of number

[sek69]

5 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

I admittedly never saw late era WCCW. Once David, Mike, and Lance (lol) were gone, Brody was murdered and Kerry got sidelined with that foot injury, I stopped going to the trouble to track down the tapes…they were not easy to come by in Canada and it wasn’t worth the effort.

But the idea that anything could be more depressing than the dying days of the AWA is mind boggling to me.

WCCW had better crowds at the end, but it was a depressing mix of no-names and past their prime guys. At least vegetative state AWA still had Larry Z kicking around until the end. 

[KawadaSmile]

3 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Not a chance, imho. It doesn't appeal to women, young or old, for starters. 

Are you sure? Most of the comments I saw were from Effron's and Jeremy Allen White's fanbase, and they do have a quite huge female following. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

The Von Eriches don't have a female following is an idea I never thought I'd see expressed.

[Dav'oh]

I am sure that the storyline isn't aimed at female demographics. The casting, yes. But Zac and Jeremy's fanbase is just a small percentage of all women. It's not a date-movie, for certain. It's a grotty, miserable tale with zero feelgood factor, apart from, "one guy lived". About, yuck, wrestling.

[Dav'oh]

17 minutes ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

The Von Eriches don't have a female following

It's 2023. The von Erich's don't have a female following. 

[El-P]

Yup. Teenage girls today are into K-pop and videos you have no idea about (and neither do I) on Tik-Tok. Not into 80's Texas rasslin'. It's like thinking 2023 Japanese teenage girls would automatically be into a Crush gals movie. Wrestling bubble + time capsule.

The trailer makes it look like it will be one of those cleaned up version of history, like 99% of biopics are anyway. Lots of footage from a good ol' Texas family and not a whole lot about a bunch of womanizing coked up jocks who'll end up shooting themselves and bust their hearts on drugs. Hopefully it will not be too much of a revisionist history and mindless celebration of the legend, because the wrestling footage itself looks damn good. 

7 hours ago, sek69 said:

WCCW had better crowds at the end, but it was a depressing mix of no-names and past their prime guys. At least vegetative state AWA still had Larry Z kicking around until the end. 

Yep. Plus AWA did not go from fucking hot to fucking dead in a heartbeat. It was already super soft and looked dated for a while by the time it got on life support. And yeah, Larry Z. and all.

[Blehschmidt]

They've done a good job in the trailers of not letting on how god damn depressing the story actually is. So, there is a good chance they may draw an unsuspecting audience of girls who grew up on High School Musical who are going simply to see Effron all muscled up and in his underwear. 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Blehschmidt said:

So, there is a good chance they may draw an unsuspecting audience of girls who grew up on High School Musical who are going simply to see Effron all muscled up and in his underwear. 

Damn, Zach Effron is already 36 years old. 

I saw that Maura Tierney is in the movie. Funny, Helen Solloway from The Affair (ya know, that show with an awesome first two seasons and a collapse as brutal as WCW in late 1999 afterward) in a pro-wrestling movie.

[Migs]

On 12/1/2023 at 12:51 PM, Embrodak said:

I think there is a cost associated with having material on the server to be streamed. HBO took down a bunch of shows and movies recently, pissing off huge numbers of people in the entertainment industry, because I guess they calculated that it cost them more to have them there than they would actually fetch in subscription revenue.

That's due to residuals being paid to the creators/actors. WWE does very little of that.

[Coffey]

Regardless of what the state of the WWE Network becomes, as it pertains to footage from yesteryear, I will forever be grateful for getting a chance to see The Last Battle of Atlanta. I must have watched that five times.

[Embrodak]

20 hours ago, Migs said:

That's due to residuals being paid to the creators/actors. WWE does very little of that.

Is it? I thought part of the reason for the recent strikes was because companies were paying such a pittance for streaming residuals.

Another thought - Peacock may not be as interested in taking the time to post and index the old stuff if nobody is really watching it that much.

[Migs]

3 hours ago, Embrodak said:

Is it? I thought part of the reason for the recent strikes was because companies were paying such a pittance for streaming residuals.

Another thought - Peacock may not be as interested in taking the time to post and index the old stuff if nobody is really watching it that much.

There were a lot of reasons for the strike. And streaming residuals are still a cost, even if they're low compared to old network ones. Taking the shows off the streaming services can also allow a write off for tax purposes to be accelerated. Again, a much bigger deal for expensive television shows than for old territory content.

I think it's the simper answer you point out above - there's just no motivation to upload the new content, especially with how buried it is on Peacock.