Post by Pennyroyal_Tea (admin) on Oct 22, 2004 12:27:52 GMT -5
Professional wrestling's latest gimmick is to hand power over to its fans, allowing them to vote on what happens in the ring with the click of a mouse or a burst of applause.
Giving fans the ability to decide the destiny of their favorite - and most-hated - rasslers is just the latest move the "sports-entertainment" genre is making in a battle royale to regain the Pop Culture Champion belt.
Tuesday at the Bradley Center, Milwaukee will host the test case for a new kind of squared-circle smackdown when professional wrestling behemoth World Wrestling Entertainment stages "Taboo Tuesday," the first interactive pay-per-view pro-wrestling event.
Fans at the venue will be able to decide which wrestler gets to challenge current heavyweight champion Triple H for his title as well as special stipulations for certain matches through the sheer volume of their yells and applause. At home, fans watching the event on television will cast their ballots online at wwe.com.
"Inter-activity is built into each and every match," said WWE chairman and mastermind Vince McMahon.
Visiting Milwaukee last month for a news conference to promote "Taboo Tuesday," McMahon said every belt in the WWE's lineup would be up for grabs, and that organizers planned a bevy of guest ring announcers and other surprises to be chosen by fans in the Bradley Center and online.
Flipping the schedule
To underscore the new approach, creators ditched the traditional Sunday evening time slot for a WWE pay-per-view and moved it to Tuesday for only the second time in more than a decade.
"We wanted to get out of our Sunday rut. . . . This event is all about newness and its revolutionary status," McMahon said.
Staging the event the night after the WWE's flagship TV show, "Raw" (which airs at 8 p.m. Mondays on Spike TV), also gives "immediacy" to the action and allows for the continuation of storylines begun on tonight's episode of the weekly show, McMahon added.
Some wrestling observers think the WWE missed a chance to make "Taboo Tuesday" truly revolutionary; although fans will be able to pick who meets Triple H in the ring, for example, they'll have to choose from a small pool of just three wrestlers, all of whom have faced off against the current champ in the past.
"I think that's the biggest flaw with trying to sell this show. Many of the potential match-ups already can be seen on WWE's weekly programming," said Alex Marvez, pro wrestling columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Scripps-Howard News Service.
"A better idea would have been to make the voting more wide open and bill 'Taboo Tuesday' as a one-night-only-style event with match-ups you otherwise wouldn't see on WWE programming, such as babyfaces versus babyfaces and heels versus heels," Marvez added, referencing the time-honored rasslin' tradition of pitting heroic "babyfaces" against villainous "heels."
But the WWE hopes the novelty of "Taboo Tuesday" brings in fans who have been drifting away from the men in tights in recent years.
Format hits the mat hard
After unprecedented success in the late '90s and early '00s, professional wrestling was roughed up and tossed off the top of pop culture's A-list. The triple-threat of a slowing economy, a growing number of entertainment choices and, observers say, a dip in quality have resulted in falling attendance at house shows, lower TV ratings and smaller pay-per-view audiences.
"There are so many options now, even more than there were five years ago. . . . I think the economy has played a little part, too, especially in house show attendance, which has dropped off considerably in the last two or three years," said Mike Mooneyham, co-author of "Sex, Lies and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation" and wrestling columnist for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.
The Sun-Sentinel's Marvez sees more than the economy to blame for the tumble in attendance.
"There is little impetus for fans to attend most of them in that nothing that happens on the card makes an impact when it comes to the television product," Marvez said. "To their credit, WWE's talent roster works extremely hard at live shows. . . . But that isn't selling tickets."
'Raw's' biggest wrinkle
According to a Sept. 13 story in Variety, the once-invincible "Raw" has experienced a double-digit drop in ratings since early 2001 - and of those still watching, the median age of a "Raw" fan has gone from 26.7 at the start of 2001 to 33.4 as of August 2004.
Age becomes a factor not only in selling TV ads on the promise of delivering the coveted young male audience, but also in marketing the WWE's other products, which include video games, DVDs, magazines and a film production company with two projects slated for release in 2005.
The WWE's video game and DVD sales have been successful enough to keep the company not just afloat but profitable, and expansion into touring overseas markets such as Australia has been breaking box office records: Three sellout events Down Under earlier this year raked in more than $3.4 million.
But McMahon is aware he has to work harder to lure back many fans - and to recruit younger audiences faced with an ever-growing number of entertainment options.
"It gets more challenging every year, because every year there are other forms of media competing with us, . . ." McMahon said. "Maybe this concept (of an interactive pay-per-view) is something we should have tried a couple years ago, I don't know."
The secret move
"The Chairman," as McMahon is known by fans and haters alike, believes that regardless of the success of Tuesday's event, his wrestling empire still has a killer finishing move that the competition simply can't match.
"Our intellectual property is unique. It comes alive and . . . allows itself the venue of film, of video games, any medium," McMahon said.
"You may like a movie, but you can't see that movie performed live," he continued. "An actor may make some kind of appearance, but it won't be the same. . . . Even Disney can't do (what we do). The closest you get is 'Disney on Ice.'
"With us, we come to your town. Fans boo. They cheer. They interact. It's the ultimate in fan participation."
While professional wrestling does have a rubbery knack for fitting whatever medium McMahon tries on it for size, industry observers think "The Chairman" should pay less attention to empire expansion and more to actual wrestling.
"The scriptwriting is horrible, with storylines either tasteless . . . or sleazy enough to make parents keep their children from watching," Marvez said.
Wrestling's slide in ratings coincided with an increase in cheesecake and just plain cheese in the storylines. The Barbie-brawlers-in-bikinis appeal of WWE Divas has been mocked widely in fan chat rooms, and recent plots involving a miscarriage and other way-outside-the-turnbuckle tawdriness have some longtime fans shaking their heads.
Getting WWE off the ropes
The WWE is also, as they say in other, less-scripted sports, in a "rebuilding year" - and has only itself to blame, contend observers.
Marvez points to the 2001 purchase by the WWE of its rival World Championship Wrestling as a golden - but lost - opportunity to achieve world domination.
"One of Vince's biggest mistakes was badly dropping the ball with the purchase of WCW, presenting its stars as second-class citizens and alienating the promotion's remaining fan base," said Marvez, also noting that McMahon failed to groom former WCW talents as possible successors to the WWE throne.
McMahon himself admits that the WWE is in a tricky period talent-wise. Its biggest draws of the late-'90s heyday, The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, have put their mat time on hold due to a thriving Hollywood career and serious neck injury, respectively.
"Success (in wrestling) is all about being creative and having superstars," McMahon said. "The good thing about now, when we're not at the top of our game as we were a few years ago, is that it lets new stars evolve logically, just like in Hollywood."
Emerging talents such as Randy Orton, expected to be a fan favorite at "Taboo Tuesday," have time to experiment with different angles and find what fits them best, McMahon said.
"Any time you try to force someone on an audience, saying 'Hey, he's a star,' they reject it. . . . We're in the entertainment business, but we know you can't (expletive) the public. If I'm pushing an idea too hard and they don't like it, they'll push back," McMahon said.
And with the interactive "Taboo Tuesday," fans have a chance to push McMahon and his minions like never before.
McMahon says he's ready to listen.
Said "The Chairman": "If we do our jobs correctly, people can't get enough of us - because we're giving them what they want."
Credit: jsonline.com
Giving fans the ability to decide the destiny of their favorite - and most-hated - rasslers is just the latest move the "sports-entertainment" genre is making in a battle royale to regain the Pop Culture Champion belt.
Tuesday at the Bradley Center, Milwaukee will host the test case for a new kind of squared-circle smackdown when professional wrestling behemoth World Wrestling Entertainment stages "Taboo Tuesday," the first interactive pay-per-view pro-wrestling event.
Fans at the venue will be able to decide which wrestler gets to challenge current heavyweight champion Triple H for his title as well as special stipulations for certain matches through the sheer volume of their yells and applause. At home, fans watching the event on television will cast their ballots online at wwe.com.
"Inter-activity is built into each and every match," said WWE chairman and mastermind Vince McMahon.
Visiting Milwaukee last month for a news conference to promote "Taboo Tuesday," McMahon said every belt in the WWE's lineup would be up for grabs, and that organizers planned a bevy of guest ring announcers and other surprises to be chosen by fans in the Bradley Center and online.
Flipping the schedule
To underscore the new approach, creators ditched the traditional Sunday evening time slot for a WWE pay-per-view and moved it to Tuesday for only the second time in more than a decade.
"We wanted to get out of our Sunday rut. . . . This event is all about newness and its revolutionary status," McMahon said.
Staging the event the night after the WWE's flagship TV show, "Raw" (which airs at 8 p.m. Mondays on Spike TV), also gives "immediacy" to the action and allows for the continuation of storylines begun on tonight's episode of the weekly show, McMahon added.
Some wrestling observers think the WWE missed a chance to make "Taboo Tuesday" truly revolutionary; although fans will be able to pick who meets Triple H in the ring, for example, they'll have to choose from a small pool of just three wrestlers, all of whom have faced off against the current champ in the past.
"I think that's the biggest flaw with trying to sell this show. Many of the potential match-ups already can be seen on WWE's weekly programming," said Alex Marvez, pro wrestling columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Scripps-Howard News Service.
"A better idea would have been to make the voting more wide open and bill 'Taboo Tuesday' as a one-night-only-style event with match-ups you otherwise wouldn't see on WWE programming, such as babyfaces versus babyfaces and heels versus heels," Marvez added, referencing the time-honored rasslin' tradition of pitting heroic "babyfaces" against villainous "heels."
But the WWE hopes the novelty of "Taboo Tuesday" brings in fans who have been drifting away from the men in tights in recent years.
Format hits the mat hard
After unprecedented success in the late '90s and early '00s, professional wrestling was roughed up and tossed off the top of pop culture's A-list. The triple-threat of a slowing economy, a growing number of entertainment choices and, observers say, a dip in quality have resulted in falling attendance at house shows, lower TV ratings and smaller pay-per-view audiences.
"There are so many options now, even more than there were five years ago. . . . I think the economy has played a little part, too, especially in house show attendance, which has dropped off considerably in the last two or three years," said Mike Mooneyham, co-author of "Sex, Lies and Headlocks: The Real Story of Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation" and wrestling columnist for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.
The Sun-Sentinel's Marvez sees more than the economy to blame for the tumble in attendance.
"There is little impetus for fans to attend most of them in that nothing that happens on the card makes an impact when it comes to the television product," Marvez said. "To their credit, WWE's talent roster works extremely hard at live shows. . . . But that isn't selling tickets."
'Raw's' biggest wrinkle
According to a Sept. 13 story in Variety, the once-invincible "Raw" has experienced a double-digit drop in ratings since early 2001 - and of those still watching, the median age of a "Raw" fan has gone from 26.7 at the start of 2001 to 33.4 as of August 2004.
Age becomes a factor not only in selling TV ads on the promise of delivering the coveted young male audience, but also in marketing the WWE's other products, which include video games, DVDs, magazines and a film production company with two projects slated for release in 2005.
The WWE's video game and DVD sales have been successful enough to keep the company not just afloat but profitable, and expansion into touring overseas markets such as Australia has been breaking box office records: Three sellout events Down Under earlier this year raked in more than $3.4 million.
But McMahon is aware he has to work harder to lure back many fans - and to recruit younger audiences faced with an ever-growing number of entertainment options.
"It gets more challenging every year, because every year there are other forms of media competing with us, . . ." McMahon said. "Maybe this concept (of an interactive pay-per-view) is something we should have tried a couple years ago, I don't know."
The secret move
"The Chairman," as McMahon is known by fans and haters alike, believes that regardless of the success of Tuesday's event, his wrestling empire still has a killer finishing move that the competition simply can't match.
"Our intellectual property is unique. It comes alive and . . . allows itself the venue of film, of video games, any medium," McMahon said.
"You may like a movie, but you can't see that movie performed live," he continued. "An actor may make some kind of appearance, but it won't be the same. . . . Even Disney can't do (what we do). The closest you get is 'Disney on Ice.'
"With us, we come to your town. Fans boo. They cheer. They interact. It's the ultimate in fan participation."
While professional wrestling does have a rubbery knack for fitting whatever medium McMahon tries on it for size, industry observers think "The Chairman" should pay less attention to empire expansion and more to actual wrestling.
"The scriptwriting is horrible, with storylines either tasteless . . . or sleazy enough to make parents keep their children from watching," Marvez said.
Wrestling's slide in ratings coincided with an increase in cheesecake and just plain cheese in the storylines. The Barbie-brawlers-in-bikinis appeal of WWE Divas has been mocked widely in fan chat rooms, and recent plots involving a miscarriage and other way-outside-the-turnbuckle tawdriness have some longtime fans shaking their heads.
Getting WWE off the ropes
The WWE is also, as they say in other, less-scripted sports, in a "rebuilding year" - and has only itself to blame, contend observers.
Marvez points to the 2001 purchase by the WWE of its rival World Championship Wrestling as a golden - but lost - opportunity to achieve world domination.
"One of Vince's biggest mistakes was badly dropping the ball with the purchase of WCW, presenting its stars as second-class citizens and alienating the promotion's remaining fan base," said Marvez, also noting that McMahon failed to groom former WCW talents as possible successors to the WWE throne.
McMahon himself admits that the WWE is in a tricky period talent-wise. Its biggest draws of the late-'90s heyday, The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, have put their mat time on hold due to a thriving Hollywood career and serious neck injury, respectively.
"Success (in wrestling) is all about being creative and having superstars," McMahon said. "The good thing about now, when we're not at the top of our game as we were a few years ago, is that it lets new stars evolve logically, just like in Hollywood."
Emerging talents such as Randy Orton, expected to be a fan favorite at "Taboo Tuesday," have time to experiment with different angles and find what fits them best, McMahon said.
"Any time you try to force someone on an audience, saying 'Hey, he's a star,' they reject it. . . . We're in the entertainment business, but we know you can't (expletive) the public. If I'm pushing an idea too hard and they don't like it, they'll push back," McMahon said.
And with the interactive "Taboo Tuesday," fans have a chance to push McMahon and his minions like never before.
McMahon says he's ready to listen.
Said "The Chairman": "If we do our jobs correctly, people can't get enough of us - because we're giving them what they want."
Credit: jsonline.com