Welcome to another edition of The Wrestling Post. This week we take a look at the WWE’s online move to Yahoo!, a pro wrestler gets in trouble on twitter and TNA moves one hour later while Bellator goes to Wednesday nights.
WWE moves content to Yahoo! Divas get own show on E!
Variety reports on Yahoo!’s partnership for showing exclusive WWE content online. Earlier this month engaged in a content agreement E! Television. Despite its time on YouTube, the WWE passed on being one of the new channels on YouTube’s fee based subscription service.
As if there wasn’t enough wrestling on Monday night, Yahoo! will air a 30 minute pregame show for Monday Night Raw among other original content. The deal includes Yahoo! having access to the WWE’s library. The Big Show and Stephanie McMahon made an appearance at the upfronts for Yahoo! WWE content should make its debut this summer on Yahoo!
In addition, the WWE Divas will have their own one hour reality show on the E! Network. Presumably, it will follow the women of the WWE backstage and through their “real” lives.
Payout Take: The new Yahoo! deal is an interesting switch from YouTube as the two parties decided not to renew its deal. WWE has opted to stick with an ad-based model (relying on ads for revenue) for its online content rather than join YouTube in a subscription-based model. As we know, the UFC and TNA Wrestling have pay channels in YouTube’s pilot program. Perhaps the WWE did not want to have fans to spend money on a subscription-based channel when it plans to have its own network to subscribe to soon. It could also be that the WWE saw more of advantage with ad revenue than subscriptions.
ROH disciplines its Champion for Offensive Tweet
The Wrestling Post does not usually cover independent wrestling organization Ring of Honor but its champion, Jay Briscoe, got into some hot water after making some controversial tweets about gay marriage. Briscoe, a native of Delaware, reacted via twitter to the recent passage of his state’s new law allowing gay marriage. Essentially, he’s not a fan of it.
In an effort to make things right, Ring of Honor made Briscoe apologize in the ring and he indicated that he would make a donation to an anti-bullying organization.
Payout Take: Even in the independent wrestling circuit, protecting the brand of the company and its image is necessary. The actions by Ring of Honor may not have happened on the independent circuit 10 years earlier. But, in an effort to be more inclusive and realizing that the world is much more accessible via the internet (i.e., people from all over the world can buy its DVDs, iPPVs, t-shirts, etc.) the organization made a decision to have its wrestler make a real apology.
TNA Moves to 9pm while Bellator moves to Wednesdays
In a move that will have more ramifications than just the wrestling show, Spike TV has decided to move TNA’s Impact Wrestling to 9pm/8pm Central on Thursday nights starting May 30th. The network announced that Bellator would move to Wednesdays starting with its Summer Series in July.
Payout Take: Maybe its a move for daylight savings time as many people will be outside enjoying the extra daylight and not inside watching TNA. We will see how this will impact ratings. For Bellator fans, how will moving to Wednesday nights affect its programming? There was not much proven correlation between TNA as its lead-in as Impact had a bigger audience that seemingly tailed off once Bellator came on. Yet, having a strong lead-in may mean more viewers checking out the Bellator product.
Bellator ratng will take a hit without TNA. One has to think some of those people stayed even if most didn’t. I don’t see anything else Spike has as a lead in helping get those back.
Mo Lawal was a huge bust..