Been watching some some wwe documentaries and reading some wrestling books and one thing that do not understand is this. Why does Bischoff takes credit or gets pointed to as the man that made the jump to doing a PPV very month? Before he was in charge of WCW, WCW was doing more PPV than the WWF at the time. But it was in 1995 that the WWF started to do the In Your Houses. It wasn't until 1997 that WCW had a PPV a month and WCW needed to create one. So why doesn't the WWF take the bullet for having a PPV a month?
When Bischoff took over in 1993 WCW was running Superbrawl, Beach Blast, Halloween Havoc and Starrcade. Bischoff immediately added Fall Brawl, Battlebowl and a few others to expand out to 8 shows a year by 95. And then WWF basically added the In Your House shows because they were getting killed in the PPV arms race, even though Vince decidedly did not want to do it. WCW was absolutely the aggressor in that war and Vince would have stayed at 6-8 shows per year for much longer. But if he had let WCW have that piece of the PPV pie to themselves 5 months of the year, fans would have become conditioned to buying WCW shows in those months. So yes, I'd say Bischoff gets all the credit in this case for forcing WWF's hand.
Any of you bros wanna come by my house and watch Beach Blast?
ReplyDeleteGreat, now I gotta put pants on...
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, no. I don't need to see what goes on at your house.
ReplyDeleteDidn't stop the nerd in the first IYH commercials.
ReplyDeleteStill can't imagine a lazier transition into monthly PPV's than what the WWF served up in 1995.
ReplyDeleteWe need 7 more PPV's any suggestions? Uh how bout In Your House 7 different times?
Vince - I like it!
No new gimmick matches or concepts, no cool sounding names just subtitled In Your House's. They really did deserve to go out of business.
Now there's a role model I can aspire to!
ReplyDeleteI liked the idea of a secondary, shorter PPV that was all "star" matches. Remember, this was before the days of ridding the world of scrub matches. The name was lame, but the concept was fine. Other than the 4th, all the first year IYH's were a decent waste of 2 hours.
ReplyDeleteThem being 2 hours and cheaper has nothing to do with them being creatively bankrupt name/gimmick wise.
ReplyDeleteAnd what PPV's were you watching that had "Scrub" matches in 1994? Regardless of quality of any IYH shows they were a terrible addition to the pantheon of the Royal Rumble,King Of the Ring & Summerslam.
You've never been to a Danimal party/
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect running 12 PPVs a year hastened the demise of the wrestling business. It just isn't sustainable.
ReplyDeleteNow with the 'twork, they ought to be able to cut back.
ReplyDeleteDid I say PPV? I meant every show WWF Did. It wasn't like Raw now. In 1994-95, we had one "superstar" match, and it usually blew. A 2 hour block of nothing but name matches was a breath of fresh air in an era of only 4-5 PPV's a year, no SNME, no Prime Time, no tv house shows.
ReplyDeleteOh my god, the PTA has disbanded!
ReplyDeleteIt was sustainable if they didnt water down the television product. Adding Smackdown and Thunder hurt the biz in my opinion more.....
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've run the idea of them going back to like 8 for the main show and then insert 4 NXT pay-per-views on the Network in the other months.
ReplyDeleteAnd with as much mainstream heat as UFC has gotten for oversaturation in the last couple years, the timing could actually be perfect from a PR perspective.
ReplyDeleteBut think about this:
ReplyDeleteWhen you have 6 PPVs you have 8 shows to build the PPVs - with 1 weekly show.
When you have 12 PPVs you only have 4 shows to build the PPVs - with 1 weekly show.
Which means, that if you want to have the same time (== number of shows) to build the 12 PPVs you would need two weekly shows. And it shouldn't make much difference.
Another important distinction of this is that not only did Bischoff push for more PPVs, he pushed for full priced ones.
ReplyDeleteYou basically had industry people who believed buyrates were very much impacted by price and and then guys like Bischoff that believed even on a monthly schedule you had a certain "base" that would always purchase and thus make all PPVs profitable -- and the latter ended up being true. So while the WWF and WCW were doing similarly low buyrate by 1995, Bischoffs shows were making a lot more money each time out at $10 - $13 more a show. The WWF was more reluctant to try that as they expanded their schedule and also had the double whammy of giving their IYH shows a second rate quality compared to their "big 5" simply by distinguishing them as a "value" show.
And then they made the WCW PPVs less valuable, because they gave away many big money matches for free (at Nitro and even Thunder).
ReplyDeleteI think there are notable instances of that (Hogan/Goldberg being the biggie) but I think some of that was also part of the arms race that was the MNWs too -- WCW gave away some big matches in 1995 to get noticed, then the WWF shifted their whole model to compensate. Both companies were doing crazy stuff at their peaks though. It really wasn't until WCW was way behind in the ratings that cannibalizing their PPVs seemed to hurt them. They have away Hogan/Sting in 1995 on Nitro and then popped their biggest number ever with the same match two years later. WCWs bigger issue was that they stopped effectively promoting their PPV feuds.
ReplyDeleteActually, I can't remember that they stopped promoting their PPV main feuds. I always knew what the PPV matches were, but they had often better Nitro main events than PPV main events. If I could chose between Goldberg vs Hogan or Hogan & Rodman vs DDP & Malone I'd rather would have had Goldberg vs Hogan on PPV and the celebrity match for nitro.
ReplyDeleteFunny that the guy who pushed for monthly PPVs, Bischoff, was the same guy who gave PPV style matches away for free on Nitro like Hogan-Goldberg
ReplyDeleteBischoff, the guy tries to take credit by eliminating all the Clash of Champions, prime time cable timeslots that TBS gave them for free
ReplyDeleteand what kind of idiot books monthly PPVs at the same time he does tv tapings 6 months in advance giving away every title change in the company?
ReplyDeleteI liked having 4-6 ppvs. I think you can do one a month, but make it more like the In Your House days, when there were different tiers of PPV show. Let the Big Four feature all the big names. Individual B-shows can showcase certain guys without necessarily being as "big" as the other shows. Price them accordingly too. Once the companies went to 12 per year and priced them the same, I think it got dilluted
ReplyDeleteWell to be fair there was a lot of money to made off of that particular celeb, it was one of the most bought non-WM PPVs ever. No doubt Goldberg/Hogan could have broken all WCW records in terms of buyrates, gate and attendance though.
ReplyDeleteYou give away less matches with less TV and you have less writing needed with less TV. Its pretty much why PPVs feel like just another episode of Raw nowadays....
ReplyDeleteOn the other side, between 98 and 2001 we had 12 WWF PPVs, 12 WCW PPVs and several ECW PPVs, RAW, Nitro, Thunder, Smackdown etc. and I never heard anyone complaining about too much PPVs or shows or wrestling in general on TV. It's all about the booking...
ReplyDeleteNo no no the PTA has not disbanded
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget... NITRO BEAT RAW IN THE RATINGS FOR 84 CONSECUTIVE WEEKS.
ReplyDeleteTrue but eventually the writers and people in charge did suffer burnout and their replacements have not been as good. Russo will always say that the creation of Smackdown was the reason he left. And while Russo was not the greatest, Id take his WWF run over anything we have gotten in the Brass Ring Era....
ReplyDelete