I never did talk about the press confrence? Blame it on the baseball mood I’m in.
Mostly, they threw out a lot of ideas
– As one of the bigger Tough Enough supporters, I’m really dislike this idea of Tough Enough on SmackDown! The problem with the normal episodes of Tough Enough is you couldn’t get a read on anyone but the two or three people who got (edited) storylines that episode. Even if they cut down the particpants, there’s no way 5-7 minutes per week is going to give you any idea who’s worthwhile and the whole contest turns into whoever the editors think looks best in video packages. It’s less a competition and more a multi week long form vignette build up for whoever they choose, and that doesn’t seem to make for intersting TV.
Scaia has floated idea for the Diva Search turning into angles, but since there’s a stated big money contract already, I think they’d get in too much trouble if it was or turned in to one. Since nothing’s been announced here, there’s not that problem, and I think they should use it. If we’re only going to end up picking who they people deciding things want us to pick, why not use it as a vehicle to introduce a new character from OVW? Fill out the “trainees” with indy guys to make the OVW guy look good and build towards a debuting angle, and cover yourself by promising a contract to those indy guys if they impress, but don’t make the mistake of pretending it’s not fixed when talking about it off-TV.
One of the drawbacks to the normal structure of Tough Enough is the characters with the most intersting/wacky traits are often kicked off because those traits. If Tough Enough was worked, instead of a Scott or Wendell or Hawk having a couple weeks invested into them only to get cut, they can actually win, since they’re only characters (and hopefully the real people wouldn’t be as annoying.)
That’s a lemonade out lemon situation, but I still think it’s a bad idea.
– No offense to people not in North America, but when’s the last time a TV show taped not in NA actually was worthwhile? The WCW foregin shows were always filler (but then, so was everyting), the WWF UK PPVs were usually filler, and last RAWs they taped elsewhere are only notable for the contiunally shrinking ratings number Vince Russo claims they got. (How it will be told somewhere around 2010: “They had RAW on three contintents and it got a .00004! That next Tuesday, Vinny Mac came into my office, got down on his hands and knees, and begged ‘Mr. Russo, please save my company! Your multi-million dollar magazines are the only shining light in this barren franchise! Please share your incredible singular genius with this entire company!’ I consented, and the next week, we got a 12.4”)
There’s some curosity interest here – RAW in Japan would be interesting for the reactions, but I don’t see this improving the quality of the shows benefiting from this. I hope I’m wrong. I do suspect they’ll be hot crowds when they try this.
– DVD sales doing huge numbers is a great sign for those of us who like DVDs and old matches being brought back to life. They’re definetly believing there’s a market for these things, and when the WWE finds a market for something, it floods the market. I expect “the Best Of A-Train (a 3 DVD set)” sometime in 2006. Presuming he’s still A-Train then.
Actually, unless the UPN deal is preventing it, they need to get to doing some Best Of SmackDown! DVDs already. While TLC3 is finally making it on a recorded device in the near future, there’s a lot of great stuff that gets left off because it’s not a PPV release and doesn’t fit a narrower biograph.
– I’m sure I love the idea of voting for President of RAW and SmackDown! more than most. But as long as we’re coming up with new ideas for existing talent, I’m usually for it. There’s a lot of potential for goofy campagin speeches and I hope they take advantage of it.
– WWE saying “we don’t expect SpikeTV to pay less for our shows” is a complete positioning statement and I doubt they even believe it, but why give up that position until they have to.
– How many quarters in a row have they talked about the movies they’re doing without having done anything about the moves?
– Somehow, I’m thinking they’ll bring up 4 PPVs in one quarter a lot more next quarter (and next year) than they did here.