|
|
 Well, *I* still dug it. THE RING POST has new Tony D. and SamJerry, and since I forgot to shill my boy Jones' latest parody in the recap Sunday go there for that too, plus all the other stuff I already put over and the new MONDAY NIGHT SUCKS tomorrow. Also looking to get a Low Blow in very soon. And our esteemed leader Yeahgr made that banner you may be about to toss over. Thanks Davey, you da fucking MAN (Damn, three in a row on here. Now re-register homeboy... you know what I'm talking about). D’oh… Yeahgr didn’t make that banner. I did (in keeping with the season). Trust me for next time though… his is MUCH scarier. OMG BUBS IS CAPTAIN LOU!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! And got the jewspam from Jedi... LETHAL INJECTION (and the infamous TOTAL REQUEST LETHAL) will be back online any day now... and FINALLY on a server that doesn't crash more than small twin-engine planes carrying politicians. Check in, I promise SBA is still as sexy as you remember. Enough of the ads... let's talk wrestling (which was written before reading the Roughkut post, so if there’s any overlap… fucking deal with it). My memory is a little cloudy (gee, wonder why?), did they wait until it dropped into the 2's before calling on a mercy killing for WCW? If you haven't heard, no longer care, or stopped watching altogether and only came here accidentally because it's on your bookmark list right above your favorite furry site; RAW dropped a whopping .4 from the previous week; the first since the infamous “screwed your brains out" spot. Depending on the math formula I'm too lazy to look up, that means somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 people decided their sensibilities would come under less of an assault watching football or sitcoms or tapes of ladies squashing worms with their bare feet. Yipes! I don't care who you are or how many viewers you have, that is a DEADLY drop off in viewers. I can guarantee you if “Friends" pulled something that chased away that many viewers with a single episode, not only would the producers be on the Today show the next morning begging for forgiveness, but they'd be offering to send anyone who forgave them free nudes of Jennifer Aniston diddling herself. The LAST thing they'd do is compare it to some classic moment in film and suggest that the simpleton viewers missed the point completely (but then again, they aren't still pissed off at television audiences for not watching their football league like Vinnie is). As bad as that is, however... it may not be the worst news to come out of this whole thing. What is REALLY dangerous is that it was an absolute failure in accomplishing what it was supposed to: Getting press. This is a company that has always had a “say what you want, but spell our name right" attitude towards the media (something that's not the sure thing it once was as they still are often referred to as the “WWF" about half the time). They unabashedly admitted to as much in their statement last Tuesday; calling it a “shameless attempt at self-promotion". And the media responded with "not this time, Grapefruit Nads". Whether it was backlash for being universally fooled on the gay marriage thing, or finally having enough of Vince McMahon and hoping he'll just go away, or deciding this was too foul even for them... they avoided this like the necro-plague. Not only did it get COMPLETELY ignored (other than a few snide remarks from the usual haters) but even in the space specifically set aside for wrestling this was considered a no-no. Cody Monk, who writes a weekly column for the Dallas Morning Star newspaper TRASHED the angle in a scathing column last week, assailing every person involved in it. The editors took one look and decided that they didn't want their readers subjected to even the notion of such an angle. So a half million people or so who once had their Monday viewing habits set in stone wound up missing the payoff (“Sir, it seems you have your head up your ass"... BWAHAHAHAHA!), as well as the big Shawn Michaels return that any other week may have been able to actually spike the ratings a little (as an aside, I saw one person speculate on Shawn's hypocrisy in wearing a cross and Jesus shirt and being involved with a company that would do such a thing. I'll say this to anyone: If you're not a Christian, don't tell us what our values should be... you heretic fuckhead). And unless those deserting the product have friends who still watch, they're totally oblivious to the fact that Scott Steiner is coming in as well. More than anything, the WWE is guilty of terrible timing. Well, more than anything they're guilty of running an angle that was in horribly bad taste and chasing away a good 20% of their already dwindling audience... but the timing was nothing to stroke themselves over either. “Horribly bad taste?", you asked all confused. “Wait a second, I thought you said you LOVED the angle Barbed One?" Yes, I did. I was entertained immensely and would never back peddle on that. But I don't see TNN executives gathering to set their advertising rates for the next quarter and saying “yes, I know only 28 people are still watching, but one is BARBWIRE FUCKING MIKE! Double our prices". And let's face it, they didn't even capture the “bottom dweller" demographic... I think Stamp and I were the only ones who actually enjoyed the spot. It comes down to this: Vince knows that he's going to get a free ride on TNN for awhile since RAW was their flagship show to turn it from the "Nashville" into the “National Network" (the irony in that amuses me to this very day). But when they start getting beaten by the show that follows them, which could conceivably happen, executives are going to start looking very closely at where on their schedule Monday night wrestling belongs. And if they decide that between the number of viewers and the subject matter it makes more sense to run CSI first and have the 20 minute Triple H promo begin at 10 pm, the WWE is SCREWED (and whether they're alive or dead first is simply a matter of timing). So now they've tried gay marriages, hiring names from the past, splitting the company in half, and fucking dead male love dolls in drag (btw, was that doll from Hunter's personal collection? DAMN it looked like Chyna... or a man... like there's a difference). And every week the ratings fall further and further and further. This may be a crazed radical idea... but has anyone in the company considered perhaps putting the emphasis back on WRESTLING? I know it sounds loony, using wrestling matches to get people to watch wrestling programming, but sometimes seemingly unrelated ideas like that actually work well together. Just a thought... Eh, who am I kidding? There's only one sure formula, and it couldn't be more simple: AUSTIN = RATINGS!! Until that happens, watching RAW will continue to be the TV equivalent of necrophilia. Fun at times, but overall it just leaves your nuts cold. Eat a bag of channel switchers. Barbwire Mike Ooh, THAT'S where my gear shift went |