Category: digressing

Buy rates

Following up on Sven‘s comment

Maybe I’m confused and the last week of June is entered as July? Because we’re short one PPV, or there’s a PPV in this group really had a very small buyrate,

The best I can figure is whoever set up the backing Excel spreadsheet isn’t clear on how they want to handle two PPVs in one month yet. There should be some distinction that it’s two seperate numbers in one month or people are going to be confused.

So I think we’ve got

061304 RAW ~250ish
062704 SD! ~240ish?
071104 RAW TBA?

240 for SmackDown! would go with that Meltzer mention of mid happiness with GAB buyrate, because the rematch would be a nice 15-20% increase over the first match.

Fairly obvious spoiler stuff ahead.

Happy birthday JMS. Don’t click the link if you worried about RAW being spoiled.

Edit: Perhaps I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Continue reading “unhidden message”

That and that and that and that and that and that. And my tAR teams were next to last and last. What a day.

Ugh.

These are the nights that keep me up pacing. And not sleeping so much I spend the next evening sleeping and you wonder why I’m always never quite where I want to be.

SportsGuy (dot net) led of his post 2003 ALCS Game 7 column with a line about having to check to see if the Red Sox killed his Dad. (They did not.)

Here, today’s the kinda game you turn on the radio just to make sure Ron Santo wasn’t killed by the Cubs. He was not. Though, after they gave up the lead, he fairly obviously got up, left the booth, and trying to walk the gut shot off.

It must be a Cubs thing. I dunno.

I think I’m going to maintain a 24, maybe 48 hour local radio silence. I can already imagine the insane. I don’t want to get sucked in. Maybe national too – do I really want the underinformed and overinflated mistaken opinions of the Michael Wilbons of the world to waste a second of my time being annoyed by their moronity? Probably not.

The one thing I do want, though, is to stop the world, or at least the city and the collar counties, and conduct a Cubs census. “Are you still onboard for this season?” If you say no, well, you can buy the hats and shirts and wear your Mark Prior jersies (or even more likely, a Cubs jersey with your own name on it), but when someone ask you if you’re a Cubs fan, you’re only allowed to say: “Only when things look good.”

You’re not allowed to buy tickets, though. Those are for people who are fans of the team, and not just of winning.

By ignoring everything that’s being said, I am kinda denying myself of finding out if someone stated it correct, which is sad. I mean, I really hope that somewhere, someone who gets paid to do the analyzing for a living realized that Dusty made not just a mistake but an Indefensible Mistake. It’s not a second guess mistake, it was something clearly wrong at the time, and while I don’t want to crucfix Dusty Baker for making a mistake, it was a mistake and should be acknowledged as such.

BTW, the reason you don’t sign So Taguchi is because there’s fifty of them available every spring. They’re sadly not all Japanese, but there’s plenty of Tom Goodwins avaiable, so why pay a preimium for anyone? Unless you want them to rot on your bench.

Example: There are a lot of people who throw fast. So there’s no need to tie up a Kyle Farnsworth, and get stuck having a long term arrangment with a average pitcher. Except someone surely will, and I wish them and him the best of luck. (We did the same thing with Remlinger.)

We’re 3.0 out of the Wild Card. No Wild Card team is scary. We don’t play the Cardinals any more, and it’s a good thing. We’ve got the Reds today, so we can pass them up. Those are the things we should be focusing on – the mistakes are the mistakes, and hopefully everyone learns from them, but dwelling on the problems doesn’t solve those problems.

By the virtue of actually having outs, I want to focus on them. But I’m stuck in a culture that focuses on the problems. I don’t want that aggravation.

So let’s move on.

—-

I’m really not going to the ROH show on Saturday. Other plans came up, and it’d be too much of a rush to get there when I’m not totally sure I want to be there. I will have to live in regret that my Rocky Romero singles matches are limited to TiVo memories.

I don’t know why, but the WWE really seems to have been shifting back and forth on the cartoon vs serious aspect. Around WM, it was the serious story of two men finally achieving their goals of being the recognized best in the business, then we had the shift to Mordecai and Voodoo Ladies and Eugene and Japaneese Guys From Another Time, and then the last few shows, we’re heading back to being really serious and the brands hate each other and we’re breaking out the really good matches on TV. It doesn’t feel like there’s one philisophy of how things should work that they’re sticking to, just spinning around and trying to find someting they can grab on to.

That’s the worst metaphor ever. Muffeled message.

Looks like at least part of my theory about why they cut the Diva firing was off.

Doing an Iron Man match on TV is neat, but it got me to thinking that with the way they do things now, I don’t know if we’ll see one of those on a PPV any time soon. The goal seems to fit as many deserving guys on the show so they can get paid, and you can’t well do that if you’re giving up 40% of the show to one single match. I’m sure there’s a increase in cash when you’re working TV, but it doesn’t sound like it compares to PPV money, and since they’ll only pay if you actually work, and people will only be happy if they get a cut of the PPV, there’s really no room for 60 mintue matches featuring only two people anymore. I’m sure there’s some midcard guys still cheesed that they didn’t get match because Shawn and Hunter went 40 minutes last time out.

Of course, if they make the secondary characters any less intersting or meaningful, maybe they are better bumping them off shows. It’s cool that Rosey is now an offical Superhero, but shouldn’t that have been saved for something more meaningful then saving Stacy in a bit that won’t be followed up next week. (Why wasn’t Nidia with the Hurricane? People would’ve MARKED OUT). You’d think you’d save it for him winning a title or a big match or something for Hurricane to say “Ah. You’ve passed the test! You can now graduate!” Losing to Randy Orton doesn’t quite fit. Even if it was Rosey’s best match ever.

How do you end RAW? The first Diva Search elimination doesn’t give much time to set up the phone numbers for round 2, but obviously that’s the number 2 angle. Not only is everything else going to fill at a different level, but there’s going to be no flow left to the show. The SmackDown! Iron Man match featured at least two quicky segments to work in commerical breaks before the match started and even then people were complaining about too many during the match. The quarterly rating is likely going to drop big time from the end of the match, just because they’ll be taking lots of ad time to make up.

It’s probably too late for the WWE to steal my idea for soccer-style commerical free sponsorship, right? Hopefully it’s not too late for someone to relaize that an uncut version of the TV matches that don’t get included on the PPV DVDs would rake in some nice cash. Unless UPN or Spike prohibits, I can’t imagine why there’s not a Best of RAW/SmackDown: Jan-Apr ’04 type DVD out every few months.

I figure Spike’s probably wouldn’t be thrilled with them going over, because they’re airing the new Joe Schmoe’s after, and they’ve already cut one of those down from 90 to 60 because people tune out after Midnight EST regardless, so there couldn’t be much of an overtime if they started it at the beginning of the second hour. Triple H’s entrance would take care of the 5 overrun time anyway.

I hope Benoit and Triple H aren’t as dumb as the other two and actually work on the mat for a while. That’s more Triple H’s style so I’d think he would, but you never know what you’re getting.

It’s 2 AM and I’m completely rambling. Let me sleep. Please.

Cubs: You know what’s cool? This Cardinals series is so easy to figure. Either we sweep and get to 6 games back, or we start looking at the Wild Card. There’s no inbetween.

They totally don’t want to risk Prior pitching tommorow, but they’re afriad saying no will cost them at this point. There’s some urgency now.

I believe this is the day Rey Ordonez leaves town. Quietly.

Dream Job: They’re actually putting Mike Hall to work – he starts for real tonight, on the very late SportsCenter. I assume he’ll be there quite a bit, since it’s the one they can redo, and which reairs enough during the day that it makes him look important. (It’s a nice lead in to the Poker Countdown!) Plus, hey, stick the new guy on the crappy shift.

Angle Angle: I still can’t get over the Angle Is A Fraud video pacakge from Velocity. What a horrible nonsensical thing. Thinking like an evil genius for a moment, there has to be an advantage gained for going through with a scheme, or it’s not worth doing. That kind of thing is more the Insane Genius’ style. What was gained by Angle pretending to be crippled in the fiendish acts they brought up?

Angle tries to count a pinfall for Luther: ??? I’m thinking the cast might have hurt him here
Angle hits Cena with a cane: Yea, he wouldn’t have had a cane, but I’m thinking he might have clocked him with something
Angle says his knee hurt: OH THE EVIL

There was absolutely no thought put into it, besides “hey, here’s some clips! See how Angle is being evil there? And there’s one about his knee!” I mean, it wasn’t even close to “Jeff Jarrett and David Arquette scheme to screw DDP” comptency, and we’re not talking about a very high water mark there.

What I’m hoping is it was just “hey, it’s Velocity, who cares? And we’ve got to hurry to get down for the Diva Search special so hurry up” thing, because otherwise the storyline quality control is not so good.

Free Suggestion: Suggested Angle talking points for Thursday
– Big Show did almost kill him – that wasn’t faking. But he got better. He’s a Gold Medalist! These things happen.
– It was All Eddie’s fault, so he admits he did use his power to screw with Eddie
– And, like he’s said all along, Cena was not a fitting United States champion
– He had to take drastic measures, so he forced Cena to prove himself as a worthy champion by facing challenger after challenger, but Cena failed by not beating the challenge of his own emotions. Angle didn’t want to keep sitting in the wheelchair, but he had to do it, to show the Committee that Cena was not someone to be trusted with a title.
– JBL won the title fair and square, and even Eddie can’t argue that, and JBL is a model champion. Kurt knew it would be disatrious if a liar/cheater/stealer for the image of SmackDown! became champion again, so he did what he had to do, because by gum, it was the right thing to do
– And that’s his central point. Angle might’ve had some personal grudges, but he did what he did for the best of SmackDown!

(And then he gets fired anyway and Stephanine’s the new GM and blah blah blah)

A lot of that was stuff DeMott was trying to get over later in the show, so maybe it’s what they’ll go with. I get the feeling sometimes that he’s basing his comments less on the possiblites he’s supposed to hype, and more on the way he’s been told the the angle will actually turn out.

RAW: I’m betting the Diva Search bit happens at the end of hour one/beginning of hour two. There’s going to be a lot of people annoyed if it’s the end of the show – except, hey, you can go do something else sooner. I’m sure the final vote will end up in the main event slot and people will be annoyed!

This is a total “watch it on TiVo/tape delay” situation for the next 9 weeks. They’re going to push it hard, and likely try to blantantly kiss up to the fans in hopes they don’t turn on the segment in the first week. Plus an Oh So Shocking elimination. (I think they turn on the red head, but I’m not predicting anything besides her being annoying with her annoyingness.) The question is, do they have Trish or another girl on the roster start the hate angle with them now or wait for the winner?

Whatever happened to Jazz, by the way? I saw her name on a house show listing this weekend, but she’s been off TV for quite a while. I mean, I know what the problem is:

Faces: Lita, Victoria, Nidia, Stacy, (Ivory)
Heels: Trish*, Molly, Gail*, Jazz

And, with no feuds outside of The Women’s Champion vs The #1 Contender, you don’t have enough to do for 4 heel women. Or women in general. With Trish and Gail hurt, maybe she gets fill in duty? It’s not much of a return, but would you really expect them to have much of a return planned for her?

It’s not like I miss Jazz. It’s just weird. I don’t think WWE has too many people on the roster (perhaps the wrong people), but they rarely seem to getting the most out of them.

This could also be a “Hey, what happened to Charlie Haas?” question, too.

Divac to Lakers (ESPN.com). Oh no. This is the uglyness that ensues when you decide to leave the state.

Okay, so now that Low Ki’s back, they’ve changed matches I care about to

Low Ki vs Mark Briscoe
Rocky Romero vs Chad Collyer

And now I’m thinking about it again. They did give me the singles match I was complaining for, hmmm.

Mr. Shh wins the award for first to notice the WWE Corporate Drivers PDF being updated.

I really hope Meltzer or someone quickly posts a “don’t freak, that does not yet include GAB” message, because that’s Vince Goes Insane number. If I hadn’t presumed the GAB number would be posted this week, I would be able to blow it off easier.

I just can’t talk about Prior. It hurts too deep, and there’s going be some ugly/annoying/depressing Saving the Prior discussions coming out of it.

The tangental thing is, considering everyone close to the story has let it be known that he was hurting for a while, maybe the NJ writer was right all along about Prior ending the season with Tommy John surgery. We don’t know that it was true when it was written, but then at this point we don’t know it wasn’t. The Cubs and this year’s new trainer have completly killed any and all credibility when it comes to prediciting when a player will be able to return from injury; they’ve either been understating the seriousness of problems or out right lying, as almost everyone ends up spending far more time out than we were originally told. (Case that slipped underneath the radar because of everything else last night: Hollandsworth goes from “no reoccurance of nerve damage, just on the DL as a procedural move while A-Ram is hurt” to “nerve damage, may return in August.)

If they don’t want to say when people will return, that’s fine. It’s well within the player and the clubs rights not to say anything. Decieving your fanbase is also within their rights, but you’ll just end up with an distrustful and alienated fanbase.

The other thing is that I’d rather get a hitter than another pitcher, but that’s an even longer digression.

What I actually wanted to post about is the complete lack of attention in the Diva Search special it seems to have gotten. After weeks of hype and television time given and possibly even the JBL/Eddie match scheduled to be a strong lead in, no one the Internet seems to have watched or cared last night. (Not me either.) Even the news-ish sites have only given it token coverage, prefering to milk the Flair/Hart stuff one more time. It’s a disconnect.

(From what I was able to read: It’s either fixed or closely regulated. Either they’ll fix the votes or, more likely, do their best to manipulate them to the people they want to win before the votes come in. Which means I really don’t want to bother watching RAW live, because it’s the definition of skippable.)

Of course, the Eddie bio got a lot of discussion and not much rating. Maybe the Diva Search fans aren’t people who talk about things on the ‘net. Eithe way, I’m looking forward to the number.

Did you know I’m #1? People gesture that to me all the time. I do like how WL how is now forced to acknowledge my (legendary!!!) existence after not including my byline on the former contributers page after the reboot. Do 2 WOW recaps (and maybe a RAW? I vaguely remember) mean nothing to people anymore?

Okay, I see your point.

Between you and me, there’s got to be some major counting errors going on somewhere, because 3 of 5 is a pretty weak score for first for one month, not to mention me somehow being #1 overall after that 2 for 13423 performance last time out.

I shall use this accolade to impress very intoxicated people. Maybe actually get a plug? Nah.

I really need to split this category in two. And sort my iTunes playlists into Up and Down playlists. And recap some TV. I am actually working on other projects (in between reading – it took me under a week to go from #1 to #189 on one piece, to show you how fast/bored I was read/skimming it. Single character focuses can be droll if you

Draft results! So I have an extra copy someplace.

J: twins, token minority couple
M: Big Brother, dating/models
K: Internet dating, Texas dating
Me: pizza brothers, father/daughter

No one: team midget, bowling moms, once engaged (though they were gone before we did the draft)

I’m so glad the annoying bickering team is gone early – they usually last far far too long for anyone’s benefit.

Can you tell I’m stuck on something and trying to avoid it for a while?

Why is Albert not on his timeslot? Can I not trust this college radio temporary schedules anymore?

I found that Matt lost some credability when he first told us to form our own opinions, then started telling us that our opinions were wrong. Perhaps The Sensei is demonstrating the delicate balance of Yin-Yang.

I can’t believe I missed that, because that’s a pretty obvious flaw in the whole column. Would’ve worked out much better if he took a “Make your own opinions. You’re free to think what you think, but here’s what I think about it” tact. People rarely take that tact.

FREE SUGGESTION FOR THE WWE: When someone wins in an incredible upset like Matt Hardy did on Sunday, maybe you should’ve done more than air clips of the finish – like have him on the TV show.

FREE SUGGESTION FOR THE WWE 2: Matt kneeds knee surgery, and it’s probably really tempting for them to have Kane kill him; that’s probably why he wasn’t on TV in the first place, because they’ll only have him on TV to get killed, since he can’t do much more than that. But Kane killing Matt really doesn’t accomplish anything – he’s still Kane, either way, and he’s already killed one person in the last few months, so don’t over do the killing. Plus, it diminishes Matt’s win if he still ends up on the losing end, and you might as well keep him strong for the rematch.

Matt’s gotta disappear, to get his knee fix. Let him do it on his own – instead of Kane making him go, he goes because he thinks it’s time right now. Say he busted up his knee beating Kane, but would do again. Have him tell Lita that she made a choice without actually consulting him, so he needs time alone to make his own decision about what’s next – assuming that’s possible to say without him coming off as a jerk. And let him walk out on his own two feet, to come back when he’s healthy and when Kane finally gets annoyed with Lita that he’s willing to risk the baby.

Kane just taking on Matt would be the easy way, but it’s not the only way and unlikely the best for those involved.

I would’ve thought they would’ve kept Ingrid around JS2 longer after they turned her, because it makes for a much more dramatic situation and she won $100,000 pretty easily. The Joe Schmo Blog seems to hint she’s not done, though. And it explains the ending as Ingrid messing up an explaination on the grandparents and the storyline originally being planned for Ambrosia, which explains the ill-fitting randomness of it.

No buyrate info up on GAB. But I think they know. I’ve had a guess since I read the SmackDown! spoilers last week that they’ll use the El Gran Luchador costume one more time, with an unknown masked guy slipping into the cage. (That’s the point of the cage, right? Someone to slip in who shouldn’t be there.) Seeing as Eddie got the best of it last week, maybe you have Angle under the mask, surprising people by not being hurt anymore.

Do you have eight guys who are legit enough for a US Title Tournament? Assuming Cena’s prohibited, you’ve got Booker, RVD, Dupree as guys who’ve been around that level. But then you’ve got some level of reach to fill out the rest (uh, Rey, Haas – I’m looking at Feely’s recaps to think of the best names now – Kenzo, Luther, pick your fav of Gunn/Holly), and wouldn’t the title drop in importance if they actually won? (Maybe not Rey.) That’s not what you want out of your field. If they do a tournament (and I’m thinking not), they ought to book the winner strong in the preliminaries to try and make up for it, or it’s just another piece of gold.

Okay, back to doing stuff I’m supposed to be doing.