By "Net.cop" Scott Keith

I suppose I should be feeling sadder than I do, but I don't. Maybe I'm getting even more cynical than usual.

I'm referring to the imminent death of the USWA, and the increasingly crappy situation revolving around ECW. Although the latter is not nearly as serious a problem as the former.

I did finally get a chance to see Hardcore Heaven, albeit with a HUGE break in the sound during the Al Snow-Rob Van Dam match, and I have to say it's pretty disappointing as a whole. Paul Heyman is currently suffering from the same talent drain that Vince MacMahon is suffering from, except that Vince has all his *good* talent locked into long-term contracts (Undertaker, Shawn, Bret, Austin) while Paul's existance as a federation is threatened every day by contract offers from rival federations, mounting bills, and the overall cost of turning the "Big Two" into the "Big Three."

For my money, it'll never happen. I give ECW one year, tops, before it folds. If Heyman was forced to go to PPV to generate the necessary revenue, he'll either be dead or sold out to the WWF by the middle of 1998, because PPV is not a cash cow by any stretch of the imagination, especially when it's a fight every day just to not be banned by whatever station is carrying you. House shows and merchandise are the real money makers, and neither one can touch the WWF in ECW's case. Other questions arise: How much longer will Shane Douglas be content to be the champion of a local promotion before he swallows his pride and accepts an offer from one of the Big Two, no matter how modest it may be thanks to his attitude in the past? How many times can Terry Funk come out of "retirement" to bail out the promotion when it needs a big name to draw? How can Paul Heyman possibly develop enough good talent to use for himself without the other feds stealing it out from under him as soon as they show any signs of greatness? I think the answers are becoming self-evident, especially with the spectre of the Tod Gordon thing hanging over the promotion like Damocles' sword.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, the other shoe dropped and damn near killed the entire promotion. After reading the interviews and quotes from the people involved, you have to wonder how it's possible for *anyone* to screw up a perfectly good promotion worse than WCW is capable of doing, but somehow the USWA has done it. Take note, Uncle Eric, if Ted Turner ever decides his plaything WCW is not worth the tax write-off any longer, this is what will happen to you as every one you have screwed over on the way to the top sues your ass off in retaliation. It's always nasty when a promotion dies like this, but Memphis has such a great tradition that it's especially tough to see it fade out in a blaze of ugliness.

I personally have many fond memories of the various incarnations of the Memphis area, from "Lance Russell's Nose" to the infamous Tommy Rich run-in during the haircut match to the Eddie Gilbert car angle and on and on, although the quality went right down the toilet once the promotion essentially became a training ground for WWF guys. From the moment the Orient Express went down there in 1990, you just knew it wasn't good news for Lawler's little promotion.

Recent rumors also have Paul Heyman asking Vince MacMahon for "financial support" for ECW, which pretty much spells doom since no successful promotion I can think of ever acted as a feeder system for another. Paul Heyman is just staying alive at this point, rather than growing and expanding, and while that's great if you're in a disco movie, it sucks if you're trying to run a business.

Speaking of running a business, WCW's business practices are really beginning to bug me.

A post I recently made to RSPW I think sums this up nicely. Reprinted without permission from myself, just to piss myself off... :)

On 17 Sep 1997 00:25:36 GMT, "Wilfredo Sanchez" <sanchezw@prtc.net> wrote:

>I've always stated that taped programming cannot, by any means, compete
>with live programming. If Vince McMahon wants to compete fair and square
>with WCW it must be on the same conditions. The problem Vince faces right
>now is that Titan have been losing money due to its losing streak in the TV
>ratings and USA Network is not pleased with this. (Remember that a less
>commercial selling potential is the direct result of lower TV ratings than
>those of its competitor and that, in turn, will produce money loss.) Live
>programming costs are much more higher than taped programming costs. Titan
>will have to deal with taped programming every other week for a while.
>

Nitro has not hurt RAW's ratings in the slightest since it's inception.

Monday Night RAW didn't do anything higher than the 2.5 - 2.8 range (aside from the Warrior match that one time) in their whole history, and that didn't change when Nitro debuted. It essentially brought a new audience with it and built on it. The WWF's inability to build a bigger auidence as fast as WCW's audience is irrelevant. The WWF provides a rating of at least 2.0 week in and week out and it's been USA's highest rated show (or close to it) for years now. It's insane to think that the USA executives would penalize RAW because of Nitro's performance. They pumped tons of money into the show in a futile effort (TNT is shown in millions more homes than USA to start with) and it didn't work, but RAW did increase it's audience from the 2.2 range up to a regular rating of 2.5 or higher.

To take a case from network TV: Frasier v. Home Improvement. There was a lot of argument and debate when NBC put Frasier against the Tim Allen show, and ABC won every week. Well, so what? Advertisors aren't exactly running away from Frasier now, are they? It's still very highly rated and commands big bucks from advertisers.

It's simply not fair (or smart business) to judge one show's performance on the basis of another show's performance. The USA network might be unhappy with the fact that their flagship show is getting clobbered every week by TNT's flagship show, but it's certainly not going to drive away advertisers. RAW does very respectable ratings for a cable show, which is the dregs of TV-land in the first place, and they simply could not afford a live two hour show every week.

And the blank cheque thing was right on the money, IMO. WCW's revenues on Nitro are almost NOTHING. It's impossible to make any kind of money off a live show on cable, since it costs huge amounts of cash to produce that sort of thing, and the 3.5 - 4.0 it gets are big for cable, but laughable for "real" TV ratings, ie The Networks. A highly rated network show (let's say Friends) commands about $200 - 500 thousand worth of ad revenue per show, depending on time of year. The salaires, production costs, and intangibles pretty much negate that, which is why syndication is where the big bucks are, everyone knows that.

Now, Friends, on a *really* shitty day, does maybe a 12.0 rating. That's a second repeat of the worst episode of the year during the opening week of Men in Black II: Alienz In The Hood. Nitro, on the best day in the history of cable TV wrestling, did about 4.0 after the ratings were adjusted. By my sketchy numbers, and being VERY conservative, that means Friends does 3 times as well as Nitro, and that's in the most extreme circumstances. Usually, Friends does upwards of a 20 rating, and Nitro sits around 3.5, which translates to 6 times the rating.

The point? Nitro cannot possibly generate the kind of ad revenue that Friends does, and even then network shows make jackshit off the ads in the first place. Most of the time, it just pays the salaries and allows them to break even. Like I said, syndication is the money store. So no matter how gaudy the numbers for Nitro become, I guarantee you they're not making a dime off the ad revenues.

They only recently did their first million dollar gate, in fact. And it costs almost that much to produce one show! Live Tv is not the business to get into if you want to make money.

But WCW isn't trying to make money. They don't have to, and they don't want to. If WCW was owned by anyone else, they'd be bankrupt 10 times over by now. History proves it, in fact, because they almost were several times in the 80s. If the WWF, with bigger house show gates, more merchandise revenues and smaller roster, cannot afford to put on a live two-hour show every week, there's no way in hell that WCW should be able to without dipping into the pockets of Ted Turner, because they run less house shows (to smaller audiences on the average) sell less merchandise (aside from the nWo, there's nothing really selling big for WCW -- they know their cash cow) and have zillions of wrestlers on the payroll, all making a million dollars +, even if it is spread out over many years.

The point of the whole damn thing? The WWF can't win and people shouldn't get into conniption fits if they stop trying so hard. WCW is changing the rules as they go along by throwing Ted's money around, and Vince MacMahon has no counter for that, no matter how high or low the ratings are. The WWF survived for years without Monday Night RAW, and wiping the mat with them in the Neilsens won't destroy the WWF, no matter what WCW's intentions are.

It's like using the god code in Doom, for my money. It's fun for a while, but after a certain point it gets tedious because you can't lose. It's the same with WCW. Even if the WWF mounts a comeback and somehow beats Ntiro in the ratings, there's a thousand different things that 8 trillion dollars can do to turn the tide back again to WCW. After a certain point, if your'e a WWF fan, you just have to take a deep breath, enjoy the Steve Austin interview, and continuing watching what you want instead of worrying about the competition all the time. Someday Ted Turner will get assassinated by a manic Jane Fonda stalker and then watch WCW go into the crapper faster than George Zahorian flushing the evidence.

Until Stone Cold stuns the Easter Bunny and steals his eggs, I remain the net.cop...