TNN

[Guest TheGame2705]

Anyone else think moving to TNN was possibly the dumbest move ever? Alot of markets don't even get TNN so you lose a good bunch of RAW viewers. TNN also fucked up the Invasion by not giving WWE another timeslot. Why again couldn't they give them one? All their shows were stupid show concepts or reruns. All in all, TNN sucks.

[Guest MaxPower27]

Is it 3 years ago already?

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Hey back off, they used to have Newhart, WKRP, and Taxi. After they dropped those, however, yeah they're the drizzling shit.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Is it 3 years ago already?

Let's NOT recreate the retro thread that's in Classic, funny as it was.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

I will say this, USA would have had no beef giving them another timeslot. Remember when they helped McMahon go 2 hours live?

[Guest Stunt Granny]

Viacom will help Vince get the XFL off the ground. NO FAIR CATCHES BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Viacom will help Vince get the XFL off the ground. NO FAIR CATCHES BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT CAN'T FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

If only the legit media would cover it right, it would be awesome. We should call them up and tell them about it.

[Guest TheGame2705]

Is it 3 years ago already?

I was talking about it in a retrospective standpoint.

[Guest BobBacklundRules]

TNN did let Vince supply his voice for the classic animated series STRIPPERELLA! How much more TV time does Vince need?

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

The Viacom deal involved more than just having Raw on TNN.

[SpikeFayeJettEdBebop 0]

Was it actually a deal with Viacom????If so then it would count for MTV too. Meaning that maybe TE4 will come on TNN???? I still don't get them leaving MTV for Heat when MTV is Viacom also. But I guess the deal was just to be on SOME viacom station. IMO, FX is one of the best networks on TV right now(The SHIELD BABY!!!!!)Anyway,TNA should go there and beat the SHIT out of WWE. I mean any wrasslin show on ABC or CBS would be stupid....and HBO wouldnt give many ratings.....

[Guest bravesfan]

A point was also made that TNN had a higher possible viewership than USA, when the WWF/TNN move happened.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Not to mention Viacom purchased a chunk of shares in the WWE.

[Guest Retro Rob]

Was it actually a deal with Viacom????If so then it would count for MTV too. Meaning that maybe TE4 will come on TNN???? I still don't get them leaving MTV for Heat when MTV is Viacom also. But I guess the deal was just to be on SOME viacom station. IMO, FX is one of the best networks on TV right now(The SHIELD BABY!!!!!)Anyway,TNA should go there and beat the SHIT out of WWE. I mean any wrasslin show on ABC or CBS would be stupid....and HBO wouldnt give many ratings.....

I think MTV didn't want Heat anymore because wrestling is no longer "cool".

[Guest Sturgis]

neither is MTV so they shuld kick themselves off the air.

[JasonX 0]

Was it actually a deal with Viacom????

IIRC the deal was for:

 

1. HEAT on MTV

 

2. Promises of being allowed blocks on CBS's Prime Time schedule for Clash of the Champions-type specials (a promise Viacom imediately renegged on when the XFL flopped in the horrific fashion that it did).

 

3. Help and support for the XFL league

 

4. the WWE getting a large chunk of the advertising revenue that they make selling comercial time on Raw that they can keep without having to share with TNN

[Guest Youth N Asia]

Doesn't really matter to me. Outside of the WWE I never watched USA or TNN. I guess it was a bad idea, cause if nothing else the ratings were weak to start.

 

but TNN doesn't show dog shows

[Lil' Bitch 0]

SD needs to go on cable instead of UPN, seeing it shown on a different cable channel wouldn't be too much to ask for.

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Actually, didn't the WWF make the move to TNN when it's ratings were still really good? I know it was...what? September 2000?

 

Viacom agreed to have WWF programming on its stations, not WCW or ECW or any other promotion.

[Guest Retro Rob]

SD needs to go on cable instead of UPN, seeing it shown on a different cable channel wouldn't be too much to ask for.

At least that way it wouldn't get pre-empted in different markets every week.

[Guest Eagan469]

< misses watching the closing credits to "Murder She Wrote" while Vince says over the music "coming up next...Monday Night Raw!"

 

< also misses Lawler and Vince trading plugs for USA's airings of low-budget TV movies

[Guest The Czech Republic]

< misses watching the closing credits to "Murder She Wrote" while Vince says over the music "coming up next...Monday Night Raw!"

better lead-in: "Walker, Texas Ranger" or "Star Trek: The Next Generation"?

[Guest T®ITEC]

Definitely "Walker", because sometimes they'd air that episode that Piper was in.

[Guest Stunt Granny]

2. Promises of being allowed blocks on CBS's Prime Time schedule for Clash of the Champions-type specials (a promise Viacom imediately renegged on when the XFL flopped in the horrific fashion that it did).

 

Damn the XFL straight to Bah Gawd hell. That would've been awesome. WWE should really look in to doing that even if it has to be on TNN. It would work out great for whichever brand didn't have a PPV in that month.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

From Sex, Lies & Headlocks

 

------

 

When the McMahons last re-upped with USA in early 1998, they were on the losing end of the battle with Nitro and the ground was shifting underfoot. Barry Diller was in the midst of taking over the USA Network and was sufficiently concerned about the ratings that he told his programmers he only wanted to renew the WWF for a year. Vince and Linda wanted three years. So a deal was worked out in which they agreed to a three-year contract with a caveat: either side could opt out a year early so long as they gave notice by November 30, 1999.

 

Diller naturally assumed that USA would be the one to pull the trigger. But thanks to Raw's revival, it didn't turn out that way. While Vince was drafting his statement about Coke, Linda was drafting a letter to USA saying that they'd decided to invoke the opt-out clause. It didn't necessarily mean the end of the relationship. The McMahons would be happy to do a new deal with USA. But they wanted a bigger role, perhaps even an ownership stake.

 

The highest-ranking executive under Barry Diller at USA was a former St. Louis television mogul named Barry Baker. When he heard about Linda's intentions, he was adamant that she not send the letter. USA's stock was treading water, and he didn't want it to take another hit on the bad news about it's top-rated show. So he relayed an urgent message to her, saying that they needed to talk.

 

The two connected by cell phone while Baker was on a train to Baltimore, where his wife was going into labor. Trying to sound engaged yet casual, he said, "Go out into the marketplace and come back to me with the offer you get." He even said he'd give her more time to shop for the best deal and extended the deadline for terminating their contract to March 31, 2000. Between now and then, he'd try to work up a new offer. If she found something better, they'd certainly try to match it.

 

But to dampen her expectations, Baker added this: "I can tell you right now, nobody is going to give you a network." As Linda hung up the phone, she thought he was one of the most arrogant-sounding men she'd ever done business with.

 

At the Paramount lot in Hollwood, Kerry McCluggage was only too happy to hear that the McMahons might be shopping for a new home. The fourty-five-year-old head of Paramount's television production group knew all about the relationship they had with USA. In the incestuous world of Hollywood, Paramount had briefly held a stake in USA, and he'd been selected to sit on it's board of directors in the early nineties.

 

In the eight years he'd been at the helm of Paramount, McCluggage had developed a not altogether flattering reputation as one of the industry's more cautious programming executives. Though he could claim successes such as Frasier, Entertainment Tonight, and Star Trek Voyager, Paramount's rivals had gone into the 1999 season with better winning streaks. Warner Brothers, for instance, was producing ER and Friends for NBC. Twentieth Century Fox produced The X-Files and Ally McBeal for Fox. And Sony was a rising power with shows like Party of Five and Dawson's Creek, both hits on the WB.

 

McCluggage tried to shake his reputation by launching UPN and putting [former Disney TV honco Dean Valentine] in control. But the internal turmoil there had only served to make both of them laughingstocks. The only thing that was keeping the 1999 season from being a complete disaster at UPN was SmackDown!

 

All of this left McCluggage in need of a bold, profile-raising move, and when he heard about the McMahon's restlessness, he thought he'd found it. The WWF's stable of shows represented what studio chiefs like to call beachfront property, and McCluggage knew exactly how he wanted to use it. The corporate sands were shifting again in Hollywood. His studio's parent, Viacom, had just paid $37.3 billion to merge with CBS. Given the enormity of the megadeal, few took much notice of the low-rated cable station that CBS threw into the pot as part of it: the Nashville Network.

 

Mel Karmazin, the powerful new president of the merged behemoth, cared deeply about TNN, however. Though critics snickered at it's lineup of country videos and Dukes of Hazzard reruns, TNN had 70 million subscribers. In the war over the fracturing cable universe - one in which tiny networks would do anything to get picked up by big system operators - that was enourmously valuable. Karmazin's idea was to relaunch TNN as the National Network, filling it with enough broad-based entertainment to make it a "mini-CBS."

 

Unfortunately, TNN was at a crossroads. It had just lost its rights to NASCAR and needed something that had a high profile to keep those 70 million subscribers tuned in while Kamazin put his plan into effect. As an executive there put it, "If we didn't get something big fast, we were going to die faster than any cable network in history."

 

The politics of the situation were obvious to McCluggage: If he could wrest the WWF's shows from USA and bring them to TNN, he could knock USA down a notch while giving TNN a lift. It was just the kind of power play he'd been looking for.

 

On December 2, McCluggage invited the McMahons to his office on the Paramount lot to talk about their future. Because he wanted them to see instantly that this was going to be a different atmosphere, he welcomed them warmly, almost theatrically. Then he proceeded to spell out his vision for weaving them through every fiber of Viacom - from MTV to UPN to CBS. He watched as a broad smile crept across Vince's face and was pleased to hear the wrestling promoter keep saying, "This is fantastic. Just fantastic." Indeed, Vince and Linda were still giddy the next day when they wrote McCluggage to say that they thought they could make "a dynamic tag-team combination."

 

Still, Vince wasn't ready to leave his television home of seventeen years on the basis of that one meeting. So a few days later, he went to his biggest ally at USA, a Harvard M.B.A. named Steven Chao.

 

Barry Diller made no bones about the fact that he didn't understand wrestling. He summered in East Hampton and hung out with Calvin Klein. But Chao was something else altogether, a man who loved to talk about how he sat on his grandmother's lap while she watched her favorite wrestler, Gorilla Monsoon. He made his reputation creating the first wave of reality-based shows at Fox in the early eighties, including Cops and America's Most Wanted. (He also cut a legendary figure on the party scene, once throwing a dog belonging to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch into a pool because he'd heard it had webbed feet. When the dog started to sink, Chao jumped in fully clothed to save it.)

 

The years since hadn't mellowed Chao much. He was the last one at USA who would be inclined to complain about the episode of Raw that just aired, featuring Mark Henry lying in bed beside the seventy-six-year-old Mae Young, acting as if they'd just had sex. Nor would he moralize about the pay-per-view in which a Sable wanna-be named Stacy Carter flashed her breasts at a crowd of kids in For Lauderdale. (McMahon would try to top that the next month by having Mae Young flash her septuagenarian breasts to a packed crowd at Madison Square Garden. Only later would he admit that she had been fitted with a prosthesis, as if that somehow made it better.)

 

Chao understood that the WWF was an important part of USA's future, which was why he listened carefully as Vince explained that he wasn't just going to talk about wrestling in this negotiation. The WWF was serious about wanting part ownership of a cable channel. Even more immediate, Vince had a project that would make him a player in the legitimate sports world. He wanted to start his own football league.

 

If USA wanted to do a long-term renewal, Vince told Chao, the network had to step up. It had to take an ownership stake in his new league. It was going to be a wedge issue. Chao dutifully passed that message up his chain of command. But to his irritation, Baker and his chief negotiator, Stephen Brenner, still seemed to be taking a relaxed, wait-and-see approach.

 

Brenner was the only one in the USA negotiationg group who had been at the network under it's old president, Kay Koplovitz. And to some extent, he shared her disdain for wrestling. Certainly, he'd been through enough talks with the McMahons to feel no particular pressure to jump through hoops for them. His first volley had been a two-page offer sheet that significantly increased the fees they got for their shows - Raw, for instance, would see it's $12,000-a-week fee doubled in the third year of the deal - but didn't mention much else. The McMahons reacted angrily when they got the initial offer. The accumulated slights of seventeen years came spilling out all at once. They wanted to be wooed. Instead, they felt as though they were getting worked. And they let Diller know it when they convened in his West Fifty-seventh Street office two days before Christmas. The network's owner was just as suprised as Chao at how little progress had been made. Scolding his lietenants, he told them to get together a better deal. And to get it done fast.

 

By then, though, McCluggage's woo-at-all-costs strategy was starting to pay off. Two days into the new year, he traveled to Stamford to continue fleshing out what the McMahons wanted, including a primetime series for Steve Austin and a stake in what they were now calling "Raw Football." Things were starting to happen fast and furiously. They agreed to meet again at the national cable convention, which was being held in New Orleans during the week of January 24, 2000.

 

At the Paramount booth there, McCluggage was pleased to see Linda, but he was also taken aback when, for the first time, she mentioned that USA had a matching rights clause. McCluggage had repeatedly asked their agents whether such a clause existed and was assured it didn't. It wasn't the first time an agent played fast and loose with the truth. But as he scanned it, McCluggage realized that this added a whole new dimension to what he'd hoped would be clean negotiations. Suddenly he had a deadline: the March 31, 2000, date that USA's Baker had set for Linda to return with a rival offer. More than likely, there was also the possibility of litigation.

 

As McCluggage was scanning the document, Steve Chao was walking the convention floor nervously. He'd picked up signals that Viacom was becoming a serious rival in the talks, perhaps even starting to pull ahead of USA. Writing an urgent e-mail to Diller from New Orleans, Chao said he was "at Def-Con 3" and urged that:

 

we should go halfsies on football (50% up to $50 million). We should commit to a man-cable channel using our respective libraries as payment into this USA-WWFE partnership. And we should renew WWFE for USA on same terms as before (since we will plow investment into cable channel and football). Our clumsy USA process is getting in the way of a speedy conclusion to this. Because Vince is Vince and we don't want to lose this, you should call Vince with as much detail as possible and shake hands.

 

But Chao's influence on the negotations was limited. His higher-ups at USA continued to believe that they were safe because their contract gave them the right to match rival offers. Their first real sense that they were in trouble came on Feburary 2, when Variety's website reported that Viacom "was convinced it had locked up a deal with the WWF." That might have been a bit premature, but Baker didn't help himself much when he trucked up to Stamford on Feburary 17 to deliver the presentation that Diller promised would be better. Vince and Linda watched the slide show that had been prepared for them, straining to figure out what was new in it. There was mention of a primetime show, a WWF version of Baywatch. And there were a few words about cross-promotion on the Home Shopping Network, which USA also owned. But there was none of the sweep or dollars of the Viacom blueprint.

 

Vince was grossly disappointed. He hoped that he'd proven his seriousness about wanting to launch his new league when he'd held a press conference at a theme restaurant he'd recently opened in Times Square. One reporter asked if this thing he was now calling the XFL was his chance to go legit. "Oh, I love that question," he sneered. "May I never be thought of as fuckin' legit." Had he learned anything from his failed World Bodybuilding Federation? "Yeah," he replied curtly, "don't make mistakes." But what about the fact that his stock price lost 20 percent of its value on the news that he wanted to take the WWF into football? "Wall Street can kiss my ass," he said.

 

 

 

 

---My fingers hurt from typing all this. I'll type the rest of it for you guys when I'm in less pain.

[Guest Taz_mark]

Man I would have loved to see some Clash of the Champion's type stuff. They really should do something like a 3 hour PPV quailty show for whatever brand doesn't have a PPV that month for cable TV. It could help win back some fans.

[Guest Loss4Words]

They're kinda doing that next week, but when you run main-event level matches every week on TV, that idea loses its luster. That's why WCW stopped doing the Clash years ago anyway.

[Guest AndrewisyourHero]

They're kinda doing that next week, but when you run main-event level matches every week on TV, that idea loses its luster. That's why WCW stopped doing the Clash years ago anyway.

I thought they stopped because of thunder.

[Ultra Violence 0]

MTV2 > MTV

[Guest The Czech Republic]

I went to the second-to-last CotC at the Mecca. I think they ended Clash in August '97 and Thunder started in January '98 so maybe that was why they cut Clash.

 

Hey, check out my new cool banner! With this post I lose my great 2942 number, but oh well.