Dr. Darin Davis

Has TNA started their own “Attitude” era? Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a few changes to the programming that by themselves seem pretty insignificant, but combined seem to indicate an actual company direction. I know, I’m making the assumption that TNA Management actually has a plan. Or even that they have the idea that they need a plan.

With the turn of Abyss and a more serious Jay Lethal, there aren’t any “cartoonish” characters left. On top of that, they’ve gone from bleeping the word “ass” on the broadcast, to allowing the word a**hole to be said multiple times per episode. It’s even part of Mr. Anderson‘s gimmick. Add the bit with Angelina Love‘s backstage camera shot and you’ve got the start of a more “adult” TNA.

Back in 1998, the WWE started running more edgy angles, violence, and swearing to compete with WCW. TNA has dipped their toes in the deep end a little bit with some hardcore thumbtack matches and flaming tables (I’m not going to comment on the “glass” this time). Now it looks like they’ve got their whole foot in.

Will it be the start of something good, or just another attempt of TNA copying what was successful in the past and keeping their fingers crossed?

Interesting ending to the 3-hour June 7th Monday Night Raw episode. The NXT rookies wreaked havoc on John Cena, the commentary crew, the announce table (including the announcer), and the ring itself. Not sure where they’re going with this,other than an nWo angle. Probably the best and most unexpected thing I’ve seen happen in the last couple of years. At least as far as storylines go, which I don’t care too much for to begin with.

Also interesting to see that the WWE ring is built the same way most of the wrestling rings are on the independents. Sheets of foam board insulation with their edges duct taped together, on top of 2″ x 12″ planks, on top of a steel frame (one of our earlier rings used 4 x 8 foot sheets of plywood instead of the planks).

On the same program, however, was one of the most embarrassingly awful series of skits the WWE has put on with the actors from the new A-Team movie. For all the flack TNA gets, they haven’t put on anything rivaling the WCW appearance of RoboCop.

Okay, I’ll admit I watched the A-Team as a kid. But if I saw Mr. T break out of handcuffs on the Tonight Show, I’d call B.S. (not B.A.)

If the A-Team movie is really “the biggest blockbuster of the summer” as they kept boasting, Hollywood has a lot worse problems than piracy. In fact, they may have just created the perfect pirate-proof product. Actually, most pirates just download stuff because they can, not because they actually intend to watch it, so I take that back.

Please, please WWE, get rid of the Raw guest host crap. You’ve got a general manager now. You don’t need to turn every show into a two hour product placement.

I pity the fool that keeps milking the guest host gimmick.

I surrender!

TNA IMPACT! is moving back to their previous Thursday night time slot after trying to directly compete with the WWE on Monday nights for the past two months.

I haven’t followed the whole ratings game for quite awhile, but I’m assuming this means that the ratings dropped. If the ratings didn’t increase at all, or didn’t increase as much as they had hoped, it doesn’t seem like reason alone to move. I don’t think there is added cost for airing a taped show on Mondays instead of Thursdays (I think they would normally tape on Mondays anyway). When they were live it was probably a bigger deal. Probably more of an issue for SpikeTV, since they’re the ones that had to shuffle the rest of their schedule around.

Some would say that TNA is “waving the white flag” and surrendering. Others would say… okay, everyone is saying that. Including me.

I didn’t think it was a good idea to begin with, so it’s pretty easy for me to say, “Told ya so“. But to be honest, I didn’t really know that it wouldn’t increase ratings. I was probably not on board when Bischoff decided to go head-to-head against the WWE on Monday back in the mid ’90s (although I was at the first WCW Monday Nitro at the Mall of America). That turned out to be a huge success, with WCW beating the WWE in the ratings for 84 consecutive weeks.

But that was a different time, and a different set of rules. WCW was able to beat WWE by taking away part of their viewership. People had to choose between one program or another. There weren’t many options to watch both, except for putting a tape in your VCR or flipping between channels.

Fast forward to today, where we can watch TNA at any time of day (delayed by a week) using Hulu or TNA’s own web site. Or using their DVR (TiVo, DirectTV, etc.). People no longer have to choose between watching one over the other. They don’t have to worry about missing something, because they can always watch it later. There is no scarcity here (manufactured or otherwise).

Hopefully for TNA, they won’t lose more viewership due to people not knowing when the hell they’re on.

In addition to covering the “salted nut of the day” and their web exclusive section of “What’s Up in the Hubs“, Continental Airlines Magazine has an article about the female executives at World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in their January 2010 issue. How I even came across this, I’m not sure.

One of the biggest problems with the wrestling in the WWE can be summed up with one quote (the emphasis is mine):

There are two things WWE wants you to know. First, the operative word is “entertainment,” not “wrestling.” Second, watch how you refer to the talent. They’re not wrestlers; the men are “superstars” and the women “divas.”

The WWE has spent at least the last several years, maybe the last decade, telling anyone who would listen that they are an entertainment company and not a wrasslin‘ company. Wrestling is apparently a dirty word.

Here are a couple more choice quotes from the same article:

As Wilson points out, there’s a certain logic inherent in having women at the top of WWE. “We’re an entertainment company,” she notes.

and this

Goldsmith, who moonlights as an extra in TV soap operas, says her biggest challenge is dispelling misconceptions about WWE. “One of those,” she states, “is us constantly being called professional wrestling. That term just doesn’t give us the credibility we deserve.”

Nice. What is that supposed to mean? You have wrestling in the name of your company! Other than putting out some crappy movies using their WWE roster as “talent” (See No Evil, The Marine, 12 Rounds, The Condemned), what do they do besides wrestling? The article talks about TV, Pay-Per-View, and merchandise, but it’s all wrestling related.

I’m not sure when all this distancing started, but it may have been around the time they went public with some of their stock. Or when they started putting out crappy movies (although No Holds Barred came out way back in 1989). There was definitely a shift when they decided to enter the talk show circuit and go with the weekly guest hosts on WWE Monday Night Raw.

I doubt they would ever drop the second ‘W’ from their name (so as not to be confused with that women’s channel on cable), but how long before they change what the acronym stands for?

Remember The Nashville Network (TNN)? When they started to change their format from redneck to a “the first network for men” (which is what I thought ESPN was), they kept the logo and abbreviation but put out a press release that they now wanted to be called “The National Network“. Prince and P-Diddy would be proud. Eventually they would change to “SpikeTV” and get sued by Spike Lee, but that’s a whole other story. Now I guess they’re just called “Spike”

How about World Wide Entertainment? After all it used to be the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) until they dropped the ‘W’ in 1979.

My advice for the WWE– don’t forget what brung ya to the dance. The more you distance yourself from the wrestling, the more you will distance your fans.

I’ve already gone on about how some of us “want our wrestling back“, so I won’t go into detail again. If they think they can generate their $530 million in annual revenue off of producing direct-to-DVD action movies (The Marine 2), they haven’t looked at DVD sales charts lately.

Say what you want about TNA (and most people do), they go out of their way to proudly state they are a wrestling company.

Unfortunately, it’s right before they bring out Lacey Von Eric, the worst third generation wrestler of all time.

Back in July of 2008, I decided to keep track of my viewing time of WWE Monday Night Raw, ECW, TNA, and WWE Smackdown to see if I would be able to tell anything about the direction of the quality of the programming. This was assuming that if the quality (in my opinion) was better, I would watch more, and if the quality dropped (again based on my tastes), I would watch less.

I ended that tracking last summer. You can find the results of the that year-long experiment, including the charts, data, and a summary on the TV Viewership Stats page.

The New Method

In July of 2009, I started collecting some different data about the same wrestling programming. After a few months of dragging my feet I finally decided on how I want to show the data, so I’ve added the information to the website.

What I am measuring this time is the number of matches per hour, and the quality of those matches as judged by a simple rating system (1 Thumb Up, 2 Thumbs Up, 1 Thumb Down).

You can find out all the details on the new TV Match Ratings page. There is a new tab at the top of the main page for this.

I won’t be posting too much about it on the main page, other than the occasional reminder that it is happening, and maybe a summary every few months. Those that are interested can check out the details on the ratings page, and those that aren’t don’t have to look at it at all.

To finish out this announcement, I’m including one of the charts from that page that shows the total “Thumb” ratings for each of the four brands from 7/7/09 through 11/20/09. The idea is that the higher the number, the better the overall quality of the wrestling matches of that brand (click on the image for a larger view).

Total Thumbs Up Ratings Thru 11/20/09

As of this writing, TNA is ahead, followed by Smackdown and ECW, with Monday Night Raw trailing pretty far behind. If I remember right, the change in format where Raw has a guest host every week started sometime in July. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

What do you do when your guest host gets booed by 80% of the audience?

The WWE is continuing to try to insert themselves in the talk show circuit (see WWE + Talk Show = Raw), by booking celebrities as guest hosts on their  live Monday Night Raw program. If you’re a celebrity with something to plug, you’re in. The guest host usually does some kind of schtick, and the WWE bends over backwards and kisses their ass. WWE “Creative” writes the whole show around them and sets up some matches that the guest host pretends to book on the fly. Since the host is expected to be well liked, the WWE gets more viewers and the celeb gets to plug their wares to a different type of audience.

Except this week.

This week’s guest host was the Reverend Al Sharpton. Reverend Al was there as part of his tour to promote literacy among minorities. Noble cause, sounds good so far.

But Raw was broadcast live this week from Albany, NY, and apparently Albany doesn’t really like Sharpton. Not even a little bit. And did I mention it was live? No chance to “sweeten” the audio to tone down the chorus of boos. Just have to run with it I guess.

Jeremy Piven was the only other guest host I can think of that was booed, but only after he turned “heel” during the program. That was planned, and the crowd reacted as planned.

For a typical talk show, the audience gets in for free, provided that they win the ticket lottery or get in line for standby tickets. They are mainly there to see the host.

The WWE fans paid money to see wrestling. Considering that in the first hour and 14 minutes of the program there were only two wrestling matches, they had a lot to be angry about besides Sharpton.

This whole WWE Monday Night Raw guest host idea (where they have a different guest be the “general manager” of Raw each week) seemed like “stunt casting” to me. Other than a little media attention, I couldn’t really see what the WWE was getting out of it. On top of that, the guests weren’t necessarily fans, but celebrities that just happen to have something to plug. Freddie Prinze, Jr? Seriously? What has he been in lately (other than Scooby Doo and Sarah Michelle Gellar)?

I wrote about it a little over a month ago (Raw Guest Hosts Not About Ratings?) but until I saw an article in Variety it wasn’t clear what they were trying to do. According to the Variety article, the WWE has basically inserted itself into the talk show circuit. If you’re a celebrity with something to promote, after you’ve been on Leno, Letterman, Conan, and Fallon, you head on over to Raw to get in a two hour plug.

My first reaction was that it seemed brilliant from a marketing and ratings standpoint. They may be reinventing or creating a new genre even.

From the article:

“We wanted a different way to get our product out there and talked about,” Stephanie McMahon, WWE’s executive VP of creative development and operations, told Daily Variety. “Tying us in with celebrities in Hollywood raises our awareness and gets a variety of people talking about us, which is always a positive place to be. Hopefully it will translate to new viewers.”

“They have something to promote, and we have the platform they need,” said Chris McCumber, USA Network’s executive VP for marketing and brand strategy.

Outside the ring, WWE is gaining considerable exposure, with ESPN having heavily covered [Shaq] O’Neal‘s appearance on “Raw.” Clips from the show were played when [Jeremy] Piven and [Seth] Green did interviews on yakkers like “Live With Regis and Kelly,” “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” Wrestlers are also getting invited onto the shows as a result of the tie-in with Hollywood talent.

Given how successful the guest hosts have been, WWE plans to continue having them appear on “Raw” at least through the end of the year, and possibly up to WrestleMania 26 next March.

But after thinking about it a little more, it seems like only a short-term strategy.

Sounds like Raw ratings are up, but the problem is the product they are putting on is crap, mostly due to how they’ve been tailoring the program to the guest.

They are getting more people tuning in than they normally would (ratings up 10% at the time of the article), and some of those people would not normally watch wrestling, but they are tuning in to watch a turd sandwich.

“Hey, thanks for tuning in. This programming will be worse than what we would show on a “normal” week, but we hope you still like it and will continue to tune in after we abandon this ratings stunt.”

Raw is supposed to be their flagship show, but their ECW and Smackdown programs have better content. What’s their strategy for keeping an audience after the guest host thing ends? They run the risk of losing nearly all of the new viewers and some of their old fan base.