Talent and TV update

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

At the tapings this past week, wrestlers who fell into the Heat/Velocity category were told not to worry about being let go as the company was going to continue both shows to fulfill international programming commitments. Before this week, company sources had expected another round of talent cutbacks coinciding with the dropping of the shows.

 

This reverses the original decision made some time back when the USA Network declined picking up the shows, that they would be discontinued at the end of this month, even though many international contracts called for additional hours of weekly programming.

 

According to the Ross Report today, the WWE web site was going to make an announcement regarding the future of both shows, which seems to confirm the shows will continue in some form. If USA Network still won't pick them up, there is a chance the shows could be used as web content. WWE had talked of expanding web content with original matches at the last investors conference. Syndication could be another option. WWE had made the decision very suddenly to get out of the syndication business this summer. If the company is already producing the shows for international, the costs of syndicating it to stations that wanted to continue WWE weekend programming isn't that much.

 

From Meltzer

[Precious Roy 0]

They really should shop both shows, or a combination of the two, for syndication. My local UPN station shows the RAW and SD recap shows on saturday mornings, and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't pick up a B show with actual matches for a weekend spot.

[spman 0]

If WWE hasn't speant so many years burying the two B-Shows and making the fans believe that the shows, and all the wrestlers that appear on them are second rate, then maybe they could have used them in more of a All American Wrestling / Wrestling Challange type role. Just have it every week have established guys fighting no-name jobbers to get over their signature moves and finishers. This has been debated before, but would it be possible to ween the fans back into more of a jobber match type format? Or is having weekly shows with matches that would have been built up for months on a PPV in 1992 a pandoras box which can't be shut after being open all these years? The Jobber Match format would do a world of good for building heat and legitimacy for guys like Masters, Carlito, Conway, Grenier, Simon Dean, etc. who have a hard time drawing it otherwise, and would be great for guys at the top like Cena, Batista, Triple H, JBL, and others becasue it would give the mid-card guys more legitimacy in the eyes of the fans, and thus make themselves look better when they wrestle and / or beat them.