CI Wrestling Thread #56

[billCgmx]

If you’re looking for wall-to-wall in ring wrestling, watch AEW. The storylines don’t make a lot of sense and are sometimes awful

That's the biggest issue with AEW. And if you tune in to the WWE's PLE, which usually do, it's also filled with highlight clips and commercials between matches. Neither company can seem to strike the right balance.

 

[K-mac18]

I think I saw Collision did around 250,00 viewers Saturday night, thought that one would be lower.
Will be interesting to see what happens with the numbers when they start streaming on Max.

Probably mentioned this already but AEW is running Dynamite in Cincinnati on January 15th and then Collision at Broadbent Arena in
Louisville on January 16th.

 

[HeismaNole]

If you’re looking for wall-to-wall in ring wrestling, watch AEW. The storylines don’t make a lot of sense and are sometimes awful and the booking is geared towards people who love indie wrestling, but they routinely give you an hour plus in ring wrestling on a two hour show.

In WWE the matches are just a small vehicle to drive story. They’re more about talking you into watching/buying a ticket and saving any wrestling of substance for PLEs.

Yeah, that's a perfect description. I favor WWE because I like the pageantry and storyline aspects. Two guys in a ring with no storyline doesn't really appeal to me. It's fine to have some of that stuff but to not have overall bullet points of a storyline is just a bad idea if you wanna bring in a new audience.

 

[Booker Noe]

They need to move Collision to Thursday night anyway.

 

[Nightwish84]

WBD doesn't do AEW any favors. A late Friday night show and competing with every sport imaginable for most of the year and PLE's every month on Saturdays. Not to mention moving the shows around as much as they do. I would've loved all this as a kid though. I watched WWF and USWA, and later on WWF, ECW, and WCW (including WCW Saturday Night and Clash of the Champions). I'd occasionally watch Shotgun Saturday Night and would usually catch Sunday Night Heat too. Guess I was a sicko when Tony Khan was in a wing of his dad's house creating Hologram.

 

[Wesley91581]

That's the biggest issue with AEW. And if you tune in to the WWE's PLE, which usually do, it's also filled with highlight clips and commercials between matches. Neither company can seem to strike the right balance.

The major difference is AEW assumes you’ve followed every bit of the backstory/storyline so you’re already a “sicko” or “Superfan” or you’re just there for the dream match

WWE does a lot of clips especially on the PLE to “tell the story” in case you haven’t been watching the raw/sd the “here’s how we got here”

It seems like wwe has no problem switching tag or mid card belts on raw/sd but the world title will only switch on a wm/summerslam

 

[Wesley91581]

Also that Mina girl that just lost to Mariah is wrestling Sasha at Tokyo dome for the wrestle dynasty show.
Shes putting up her rev pro belt so Sasha can be a triple belt holder.

 

[billCgmx]

When does Sasha get the AEW Title off Moxley?

 

[Wesley91581]

When does Sasha get the AEW Title off Moxley?

All in Texas probably!

 

[Wesley91581]

So WWE is a bigger draw than NBA!

Last Saturday, WWE aired its first Saturday Night's Main Event program on NBC in 16 years. The return pitted WWE directly against the semi-finals of the NBA Cup, with the Rockets-Thunder matchup airing on ABC.

The NBA and its media lackeys spent Tuesday morning touting a head-to-head victory for the NBA, citing a 1.89 million to 1.59 million viewer advantage. But the framing is dishonest.

The WWE event was simulcasted on NBC and its complementary streaming service, Peacock, on which 789,000 watched the program live. In actuality, WWE drew 2.3 million viewers compared to the NBA's 1.89 million viewers.

Discounting Peacock's viewership runs contrary to how viewership data is reported in 2024. For example, NBC always combines Peacock viewership with linear viewership when publishing ratings for its weekly Sunday Night Football presentations. The network also coupled the viewership from NBC and Peacock when promoting the numbers for the 2024 Summer Olympics last July and August.

Moreover, WWE fans are accustomed to streaming events on Peacock, where each premium live event exclusively airs — including WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and the Royal Rumble. Hence, the closer-than-normal linear-to-streaming breakdown. Specifically, about a third of WWE viewers streamed the event on Saturday.

 

[Wesley91581]

 

[Wesley91581]

 

[MegaBlue05]

That's the biggest issue with AEW. And if you tune in to the WWE's PLE, which usually do, it's also filled with highlight clips and commercials between matches. Neither company can seem to strike the right balance.

You are so right about the balance.

AEW expects its audience to be up to speed on all the happenings in AEW plus a bunch of indy promotions.

WWE wants to explain every feud to the PLE audience as if they’ve never seen wrestling before.

 

[K-mac18]

You are definitely right about NBC and counting the numbers for Peacock. They do it for everything.

The one thing I found interesting was that Peacock viewers were counted in but the numbers for anyone who watched the NBA on ESPN+ didn't.

Also something interesting that came out today. Just posting and making no comments.

Report: Lee Fitting's abrupt ESPN departure came after HR investigation into behavior

According to The Athletic, Lee Fitting was let go at ESPN following an HR investigation into his behavior toward women.

awfulannouncing.com

 

[AmericanDragon]

How fitting that WWE hired a man who was fired for being a serial sexual offender. They just don't give a f*** about the safety of their female employees.

Around 2012, some ESPN employees were watching the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament from a conference room in Bristol when Fitting allegedly commented on a woman (who was not present and didn’t work at ESPN) and her ability to “open her throat” to down a beer, then joked that the woman would be good at performing fellatio, according to one person present. (The Athletic also spoke to a former ESPN employee who the person present told about the alleged comment.) Fitting, via his spokesperson, said this incident never happened.

In a production meeting around 2014, no chairs were available for a woman on staff. Fitting patted his lap and said to her: “I’ve got a seat right here for you,” according to one person in the room and another person who was told about the remark from another individual present. Fitting denied this allegation. One female ESPN employee said that Fitting sent her a text message around 2018 that read: “You look hot.” She showed the text to a producer, who recalled the woman’s hand shaking as she showed the producer the message.

On more than one occasion, he jokingly asked a female staffer for her hotel room number and also routinely joked about performing bed checks, according to “College GameDay” employees. Fitting denied those allegations. He also allegedly bragged about his and his wife’s robust sex life, according to multiple sources.

When he saw a woman in an outfit he liked, he’d let her know, sometimes in ways women and other employees found crude and/or humiliating. He once loudly exclaimed “Goddamn!” when a woman appeared on set in a skirt he liked. These types of comments were so frequent that one female “College GameDay” employee developed a strategy to blunt his behavior. Whenever he would say or do something inappropriate, she would open up a notebook and mimic writing something down. When Fitting would ask what she was doing, she’d respond: “Just jotting this down for the book.”

Many women who worked on “College GameDay” and under Fitting elsewhere at ESPN said they felt pressured to go out for drinks and tolerate the inappropriate remarks, worried that if they did not present as members of the boys’ club they’d be ostracized. Sometimes, before or after saying something crude or sexist, Fitting would use a phrase — “It’s OK, she’s one of the guys” — to justify why his remark was permissible, sources said. When one female employee left the show, Fitting dismissed her as “no fun” in front of a group of employees, according to one person present.

Some women who appeared on-camera were told by Fitting how to style their hair, how much makeup to wear, what outfits he approved of or did not like. He sometimes referenced aspects of their body that he advised them to conceal.

One woman said that one day, when she and Fitting were working in different locations, he had seen her on an in-house feed and texted her that he liked her hair in a ponytail. She brushed off the comment, but he texted again: “Put your hair up in a ponytail.” The woman replied that she had already been in hair and makeup for the day, to which she said Fitting responded: “Put your hair up in a ponytail before I do it for you.” (Fitting denied saying that he would put her hair up if she did not.)

Another woman said Fitting, in addition to commenting on her makeup and wardrobe, told her she should refrain from laughing on air because he found her laugh annoying. (The Athletic spoke with a person she later told about that exchange.)

“You already have these things in the back of your mind. And then when somebody doesn’t think you can advance in your career because you don’t check a box, that awareness can become an insecurity,” one woman said.

Fitting, via his spokesperson, said it was his job to provide feedback to male and female on-air talent regarding their appearance and on-air delivery.

Fitting commented so frequently on how women looked that judging women in that way became engrained in how he operated the show. In the production truck, he would direct people to scan the crowd for “hot” women who could be shown on the broadcast, according to multiple people who worked with him. In 2012, “College GameDay” was in South Bend, Ind., for an October game between Notre Dame and Stanford. Fitting had an issue with the crowd shot behind the studio set: The Notre Dame cheerleaders in the shot were not attractive enough. They were no Oregon cheerleaders, he remarked. (Fitting had a particular fondness for the Oregon cheerleaders, multiple people said, citing comments he made about them that spanned years). As Fitting ordered the Irish cheerleaders cut from the shot, no one batted an eye.

Another ESPN employee said she asked to meet with Fitting to discuss career opportunities on three occasions. Each time he asked her to meet with him for drinks, she said. She declined, as she said other women at ESPN told her not to meet with Fitting alone outside of work. Said another female staffer: “Women had warned each other to be conscious of interactions with him.” Fitting said through his spokesperson that it was common for him to get drinks with men and women as part of his job.

 

[AmericanDragon]

WBD doesn't do AEW any favors. A late Friday night show and competing with every sport imaginable for most of the year and PLE's every month on Saturdays. Not to mention moving the shows around as much as they do. I would've loved all this as a kid though. I watched WWF and USWA, and later on WWF, ECW, and WCW (including WCW Saturday Night and Clash of the Champions). I'd occasionally watch Shotgun Saturday Night and would usually catch Sunday Night Heat too. Guess I was a sicko when Tony Khan was in a wing of his dad's house creating Hologram.

I've said the same before in regards to the bolded. Then you toss in the sometimes major audio issues that are at the fault of largely TBS on Wednesdays since there is rarely an audio problem at the hands of TNT for Rampage and Collision. Screwed up audio is one of the worst technical errors you can have in broadcasting.

Perhaps it was because WBD has NBA on Thursday nights and didn't want to move Collision to Thursdays due to that, but I really just don't get the logic in them keeping Collision on Saturdays. If there was little overlap in WWE and AEW viewers it would be one thing, but it became abundantly clear on the first WWE/NXT PLEs that there is a significant overlap there.

Right now with Collision on WWE PLE nights it's either:

• Air it regular time against WWE and get killed
• Air it out of the normal time slow and get killed because people are creatures of habit and/or have the memory of a goldfish and can't remember it's airing at a different time.

Even on days when they aren't going h2h, like when it's an international PLE, it has been proven to negatively effect AEW viewership because I assume most people aren't willing to dedicate both their morning/afternoon and their evening to watching wrestling. And really who can blame them? That's a lot of time to dedicate to wrestling in one day.

 

[GeraldV]

Then you toss in the sometimes major audio issues that are at the fault of largely TBS on Wednesdays since there is rarely an audio problem at the hands of TNT for Rampage and Collision. Screwed up audio is one of the worst technical errors you can have in broadcasting.

I'm an AEW first guy, but the audio glitches drive me insane.

 

[AmericanDragon]

I'm an AEW first guy, but the audio glitches drive me insane.

A lot of the issues are on TBS, not all but the major ones are often on TBS. People who watch the international feed via Triller say the major issues don't exist.

Like remember that first Dynamite after Swerve won the title, at least I believe it was that episode, and the audio sounded drowned out pretty much the whole show? That was on TBS. And when they had to re-air a Cole/MJF pretape last year because the audio was also all drowned out? That was on TBS. In both instances, the audio sounded normal on the Triller feed.

Now some other stuff, like somehow still not being able to figure out how to transition to backstage segments, that's on AEW.