Wrestling Thread 5: FKA The Viking Experience • Page 424

Still going to tape after Smackdown and be on the Network for the time being.

 

Can you imagine being a company and thinking Matt Taven is a main eventer?

 

Observer write up on the UK deal:

For AEW, the U.K. deal was the subject of a ton of talk in recent days.

ITV announced its deal with AEW on 9/25. The announcement was not scheduled and what happened is one person in ITV programming released the news on Twitter before either ITV or AEW had approved it, leaving people scrambling.

The person who did so did it because he felt being on actual ITV, instead of ITV 4, in the Monday at 11:45 p.m. slot for one hour, was huge for the company. When asked about one hour, he then also mentioned the Sunday morning show. Negotiations were still going on at the time for a first airing, on Thursday or Friday, with Friday being the day at one point, once the idea of going live fell through recently. The announcements weren’t supposed to be made until that was all finalized, which, at press time, it is still has not been.

The announcement was then viewed by almost everyone as a disappointment due to not airing live as was expected and certainly talked about. ITV announced a two hour show airing from 8:20 a.m. to 10:20 a.m. every Sunday on ITV 4, a four day delay, and then the one hour Monday version.

One person in the U.K. advertising community said they had received info that a deal with ITV 4 was close enough to done (he actually said the deal was done) and the show was to air live from 1-3 a.m. which would be live, as has been expected, as well as with a Friday night replay in prime time, and the Sunday replay at 8:20 a.m., but obviously things changed very recently and they were scrambling.

What killed the live airing were problems between TNT and ITV 4 regarding commercial breaks that couldn’t be rectified.

In the U.K., OFCOM, which regulates over-the-air television (as opposed to Sky and BT, which WWE airs on), mandates no more than 12 commercial minutes per show. TNT will have 15 or 16 minutes, and there are ways you think you can work through it by having one break per hour that is taken on TNT but not ITV 4, but that didn’t work out because they each had certain specifications on timing of breaks during the hours that couldn’t be worked out.

It would not have been impossible, but would have been difficult and ITV 4 decided they couldn’t do it live. There are ways around it with having dark breaks but ITV 4 didn’t want to do it and they aren’t doing it with any other shows and it was not something they wanted.

There are similar regulations that apply to Sky and BT, which currently and in the case of BT, in the future, air or will air Raw and Smackdown live and have done so for years. Sky got around it by adding WWE ads into the programs for the repeat shows. On live shows, ads for your own channel don’t count toward those commercial minutes restrictions for OFCOM. Channels do use them once their commercial minutes are used for an hour.

But ITV 4 in the end decided there were too many issues to broadcast the show live weekly in that time slot.

It was also noted that the number of people who would actually watch from 1-3 a.m. on a Wednesday night would be tiny. A key to building the brand with television is using television to attract new viewers.

The existing fan base that already buys the AEW PPVs, which did even better for All Out than Double or Nothing, unlike the reset of the world, did so without weekly television to begin with. So really, the 1-3 a.m. time slot was great for that small number of hardcores but for what television is there for, it’s not bringing new viewers to the table because the general public isn’t watching at that hour.

But after a lot of negative reaction ITV 4 got, there is talk about debuting the show in a time slot closer to Wednesday or some kind of an earlier OnDemand solution.

There will be availability live on FITE TV in countries that don’t get the show live, which would be priced at $4.99 per month or $2.99 per single episode.

 

I wonder if it'll be on the ITV app after it's shown on the Sunday. If that is the day it ends up airing. TBF i'll probably watch the first one free online somewhere and maybe Sky+ the Sunday show from then on out.

Also, if it's on a Sunday morning, does that mean it will be heavily edited? On Sky, when WWE is shown at kid friendly hours, it's been butchered to fuck so that anything that isn't a straight wrestling move isn't seen. It was nigh on impossible to watch during the attitude era haha

 

wait what happened with the announcer switch up? im too lazy to find it

 

Cool thank you. Shame they still haven’t moved it to before Smackdown though.

 

NXT stays the same. The RAW commentary team (Cole, Graves, Renee) is now the SD team. And the new RAW commentary team is Vic Joseph, Dio Maddin and Jerry Lawler. Sounds like Lawler is short-term though

 

So Smackdown is the 'A' show now for sure right?

 

Well it has Brock and Roman

 

Braun Strowman liked my tweet we are gonna shoot guns together

 

eesh

 

Seth is so god damn bad on social media

 

I wish they would go back to Phillips and Graves as a commentary team. Graves doesn't work well in his current role, but I always felt that he and Tom killed it together.

 

Looks like you pulled a Drew. Of a Drew post. I can't read. Impressive.

 

Yeah Sasha would never think so highly of Alexa that way

 

its a different post

 

Whoops, I totally didn't read Seth's tweet in yours. My bad, haha.

 

@Mick how did you not brag in here about what you showed me yet?

 

dick pics aren't allowed

 

I've been behind on pretty much all wrestling aside from NXT this month. Are there any matches worth going back to watch from the New Japan shows? I won't even ask about main roster WWE stuff. I'll just assume there's not.

 

Jay White vs Naito was really good.
The tag match with Okada and Sanada set up a cool angle out of a botch.
Liger and Suzuki angle is one of the coolest things I've seen in pro wrestling in a while.

 

Edge is retiring from his podcast? Wtf is it that hard to talk a couple hours a week?

 

I did see your post of this when it happened and was not familiar with Kishin Liger before this, but now I'm thoroughly intrigued/excited for their match. Looks awesome.

 

Sounds like because of Beth's increasingly busy schedule, he's needed a bit more around the house. I'm sure it's more of a way to say that he can't continue the podcast full time, but if Christian continues it (sounded like he would), I'm sure Edge would pop up every now and then.

 

Just record at home! He just doesn't wanna do it anymore lol.