83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 362: Selling Wrestling Television

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

On this LIVE edition on 83WEEKS.com, Eric and Conrad deep dive and dissect the process and formula behind selling professional wrestling to television networks. Eric has vast experience in the field and is pulling back the curtain behind what many wrestling fans have never hear of or seen before. We hope you enjoy this MasterClass from the former World Championship CEO, Eric Bischoff. LEAR CAPITAL - Now’s the time to take action and get educated on alternative investments like gold and silver. Call my sponsor Lear Capital today at 855-271-1871 or go to https://www.learcapital.com/83WEEKS and get your FREE gold and silver Wealth Protection Kit. And as a special offer, if you open a qualied account, you’ll also get up to $15,000 in bonus coins CHUBBIES - Your summer wardrobe awaits! Get 20% off @chubbies with the code ERIC at www.chubbiesshorts.com/eric #chubbiespod BLUECHEW - Try your first month of BlueChew FREE at https://bluechew.com/ MAGIC SPOON - Get $5 off your next order at https://magicspoon.com/83WEEKS Magic Spoon—hold on to the dream!  ENVISION - Save money and grow your business with Envision Marketing—visit https://www.conradsguy.com/ today! VIIA - Try VIIA Hemp! https://viiahemp.com/83WEEKS and use code 83WEEKS! ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/83WEEKS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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us on this lovely Friday morning, February 21st, and we're going to be breaking down the good, the bad, and the ugly of professional wrestling. Our topic today is a bit of a masterclass on selling wrestling television. But before we get into our topic, we want to thank everybody for joining us live this morning on YouTube. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and turn on the notifications bell. You don't want to miss us the next time we're live. And it feels like right here during WrestleMania season, there's more reason than ever to go live. And speaking alive tonight, The Rock will be live on Smackdown on USA Network.

Eric, I don't know if you saw this, but just last night, he put a post out on social media that said bold and disruptive, unpredictable, and dangerous. The final boss returns live on Smackdown tomorrow at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on the USA Network. Of course, he tagged WWE and TKO, and of course, Triple H comments that it can all change in an instant. So there's a lot of buzz on the internet right now about what are we going to see tonight, Aaron, is the rock injecting himself back into the conversation? Might he find a way to wrestle a match at WrestleMania in Las Vegas?

Or is he simply there to announce that WrestleMania next year is going to be in New Orleans? Maybe tease a future match. We've seen him do that with John Cena more than a decade ago. What do you expect the Rock to do tonight on Smackdown, Eric? Hard to say, although I think it was a week or two ago, we talked about Rock and what he may or may not be doing at WrestleMania. And I think I said something to the effect of, I expect to see Rock in a major role in WrestleMania.

Yeah. I don't know what it is, but I can't see him showing up on Friday night to announce a WrestleMania in New Orleans before the WrestleMania in Vegas. I just can't see it. It doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. someone like Rock with his center of gravity and the way people react to him to promote something that's over a year and a half away.

I do see him just a gut. I do see him inserting himself into a current WrestleMania storyline. I just don't know what it would be. Do you think that means, I mean, I think we're both aligned that if this is really going to be the biggest WrestleMania of all time, which it's going to be in Las Vegas, gatewise, I don't think there'll be a competitor. This will be the far and away biggest ever. Rock's going to find a way to be on that show.

But I don't think it'll be in a match, Eric. I think, as you said, it's just going to be part of another story, right? I don't know. I honestly don't have any feel. I think WWE is doing a great job of keeping the audience engaged, but off balance so that surprises have a maximum effect. I see something more significant for Rock than perhaps makes a sense on paper at this moment.

It's the only way I can say it. In terms of how that'll play out or who it'll play out with, have no freaking clue because I think it's designed to be a surprise and probably will be. Well, I can't wait to see what happens tonight on Smackdown. Everything gets a little more exciting during WrestleMania season. Of course, we're on the home stretch for the elimination chamber and then things will really

start to take shape with WrestleMania. So the wrestling world will be watching with baited breath and you can bet we're going to be talking about it here at 83 weeks.com. Again, our topic today is selling wrestling television, but there's so many big stories. I feel like you've got to hit one more before we get into it, Eric. The internet is a buzz.

It's a Twitter on Twitter. That's a thing. about the meeting that Shane McMahon had with Tony Kahn. And of course, we've seen that now famous photo that I think happened that an executive airport was a conference table and Tony Kahn looking over his shoulder and Shane sort of looking maybe surprised is that, hey, is that a camera?

And we all wondered, hey, what could this be? What could this mean? And Jonathan Coachman is now in the podcasting game, the coach, a friend of mine and yours. And he went on his podcast earlier, this week and said about that meeting. Shane McMahon asked for the world. He asked for equity in the company and he asked to come in and run the entire show. And it's been reported that Tony didn't necessarily take that seriously. Maybe he just thought it was in jest

and he never followed up on it. But coach would say from his perspective, Tony ghosted Shane McMahon. I wasn't there, you weren't there. We don't know what happened, but it isn't that interesting, just learning some details that maybe Shane had even a little bit of interest in being involved in the wrestling business? What do you make of that, Eric? It's hard for me to imagine. I know Shane, hung out with Shane on a little bit, you know, occasionally, gone out and had drinks, and we've had a lot of conversations that had nothing to do with wrestling. So I feel like I know him a little bit. It's a little bit. It's a lot of, It's hard for me to imagine that Shane would be interested in getting involved in any wrestling company, particularly at this point, AEW.

Now, maybe because AEW is struggling in some respects, Shane either individually or as part of a, perhaps a group, look at where AEW is at. see some of the same things you and I see, which is certainly potential and feels that he has something to contribute that could turn the ship around or improve the odds or the trajectory of growth. If he really believes that and thinks that he can have that impact, it's not unusual to want equity in the company, to be rewarded for your ability to turn a company around. It's no difference in kind of taking over or becoming part of a manufacturing company that makes nuts and bolts. If you've been making nuts and bolts and nobody's really buying your nuts and bolts for whatever reason and someone comes in that's been in the nuts and bolts

business for 20 years or more and has operated at a very, very high level, perhaps that person feels like, look, I could come in, get a piece of the company, I could take my experience and my reputation and my relationships in the industry and help turn this company around and I want to be rewarded for that in the form of equity. That's kind of common and it makes complete sense in one respect. But at this point in time, here's the part that I don't get. The man does not need the money. Right. Both he and his wife individually and combined are incredibly wealthy. So he's not financially motivated. What would that motivation be? That's the part I don't know. Why would you want to get into the trenches at this point, buddy trenches and try to

rehab a company that arguably could use some rehab? Why would Shane McMahon want to do that at this point in his life, given his circumstances? That's the part I don't understand. We know that there's a rumor floating around about Vince. You know that Vince and Shane showed up together at Super Bowl. So maybe there's something there. But man, I think we're trying awful hard to connect a bunch of dots that don't exist. It is going to be interesting to see what happens.

You know, I for one would love to see Shane do something, anything in wrestling. And I don't know. I think I would. You know, Ben Rand, here's why I would.

I like Shane personally. I think he is a good person. I think he's talented. I think he's lived in his father's shadow for a long time. I think he grew up, probably hoping that he would be more involved in WWE than clearly he is. I think he wants his father's approval. I mean, that became clear really in the documentary.

That's a very important thing for Shane. And maybe that's his driver. Maybe that's what's driving Shane to have interest in professional wrestling again, whether it's AEW or anybody else. because I think he wants for the first time in his life to prove to himself possibly have to try to be a psychiatrist or psychologist but possibly he wants to prove something to his dad maybe he's just bored

no I know a lot of money and they're just freaking bored because he got nothing going on and it gets the adrenaline pumping maybe that's it he is a bit of an adrenaline junkie so that's an argument that I should probably think more about because he does he likes to fight he likes adrenaline he likes pressure he likes to prove himself and maybe this is his way of attempting to do that in the wrestling business i don't know man maybe it does have something to do with dad but maybe it has more to do with a sister and brother-in-law i mean we just saw Shane with his dad at the

Super Bowl but wouldn't that be interesting if Vince found himself on the outside of WWE, where Shane had been for a few years, if Shane was on the AEW side of things and his sister and brother-in-law were running the other show, man, that's, that's interesting. I don't know another way to say that. I could get excited about not what we're seeing on air, but just the real life story right there. Yeah, the internet would be just, I mean, you know, the internet wrestling media would be on fire. for a long period of time

because there's just a lot of speculation and yeah like we're doing right now we're speculating and neither one of us no shit right we're just what if you think this whole scenario but clearly if Shane were to join any wrestling company particularly

AEW given history and relationship and some of the things that have been said and done back and forth for Shane to jump on board now the day Meltzers of the world would have a field day and frankly so would we so oh God go Shane Tony, call Shane.

Set him a text, Conrad. Send Tony a text. Would you just please call Shane to keep this shit alive for no other reason than it's good for us? I'm not wearing any sleeves, Eric, but I may have something up them. Stay tuned for that. Our topic today is selling wrestling television, but before we get into that, today's episode is brought to you by Lear Capital.

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aired live on TBS from Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and we've covered that show in the archives over at 83 weeks.com. But that's not what we're here to talk about today, but that card did have a unique distinction. It's the first time that WCW ran a show specifically with the idea that it was in the host city of the annual Napi. convention, which is the National Association of Television Program Executives. So we figured out this would be a great opportunity to tackle this topic and talk about

how central it was for the wrestling business and how really wrestling on television became a constant part of your life. And really what we're talking about there is selling wrestling programming to television stations here in the United States and of course in Canada and well abroad as well. But first things first, what are the biggest challenges to selling pro wrestling programming, whether it's at a national level or a syndicated level, are there particular challenges for wrestling, Eric, that don't apply to other types of shows? Sure.

Stigma. Because the stigma, especially now, you know, if things have changed, right? the television industry, the executives within it look at wrestling much different now than they did back in whatever it was, 1993 or whatever. Look at it much different. Even over the last three or four years, the television executives within the industry that I, many of whom, well, some of whom I still have pretty close contact with, they now look at wrestling much more favorably as a genre than they did in the past.

Part of that overcoming that stigma that wrestling has always had is also an ad sales issue. So the stigma situation affects perception from executives, meaning very few executives back in the early 90s. wanted to really champion a strategy that would include professional wrestling in a programming lineup. Because professional wrestling, again, stigma was viewed amongst television executives as, you know, one step up from porn. I mean, they had a very low opinion of it. They had a very low opinion of the audience for professional wrestling. That was the stigma that existed throughout the early 90s and really up until just a few years ago that's changing but the other part of it and again related to stigma is the ad sales issue because if when you pitch a show and I'm

getting ahead just a little bit but typically for independent producers like Jason and I were at the time if we come in with an idea no matter how much an executive may love an idea creatively and conceptually let's assume that I come in you're a television executive Conrad you run a network I take a meeting with you I pitch you a wrestling themed

project of any kind back in the day back in the 90s you fall in love with it because you're a wrestling fan you don't brag about it you don't walk around wearing wrestling themed

merchandise you know but you're a fan of it grew up watching it You may love it, Conrad, but before you can sign off, and this is more true today than it even was back in the 90s, much more true today. Before you sign off on it, your job, the protocol and your job is to get some input from ad sales. Because no matter how much Conrad Thompson likes a television idea project, if the ad sales part of the company, part of your studio or your network, doesn't think they, can sell it, it won't get, it won't see daylight. It won't happen. So you've got to have executives that understand the product, that understand the audience and see the benefits of it,

but you also have to have an ad sales division that is going to welcome this opportunity with open arms. That didn't exist throughout the 90s. That didn't exist at any time up until recently. So the biggest challenge is finding an executive that's got an appetite or interest or respects the product. The second biggest hurdle, and perhaps even bigger than finding an executive that likes wrestling, the second biggest hurdle is overcoming ad sales resistance. And Conrad, you've been in sales all of your adult life. You understand, as I do, because I've been in sales my entire adult life. And I've worked amongst some of the best salespeople, you know, guys that should write books.

And I've worked against, or not against, but I've worked with ad salespeople who, and the largest percentage of them are really good at making the most amount of money with the least amount of effort. That's one characteristic, I think, and it's not a bad thing. It's a talent in and of itself if one manages it properly, but salespeople tend to gravitate towards an opportunity to make the most amount of money with the least amount of risk or effort. So when you take professional wrestling back in the 90s, whether it be syndicated or primetime show and cable, say, hey, I got this great idea and we've got this talent,

we got this talent, and here's how we're going to do it differently. So we stand out from the competition, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can pitch your ass off, do all that shit. But if you can't get an ad sales executive to go, you know what, I think we can sell this. You're dead in the water. And that's what the effort in Vegas was based around NAPD is to try to demonstrate not with a video, not with a sales presentation in a really pretty deck, but with an invitation to come and see for yourself how your audience reacts to this product because a lot of executives and decision makers had never watched wrestling or ever attended events. They just had an opinion about it and wasn't good.

But when those executives would sit at ringside or even back in the cheap seats and they see the energy and they see the connection between the audience and the talent in the ring, it often changed their opinion. People who were either ambivalent about wrestling, didn't care one way or the other, weren't particularly interested. Those were the easy ones because they come in and go through. kind of an open mind. They were like neutral on the subject. And then when you get them in that room and there's 5, 10, 15, 20,000 people as we had probably, I don't know where we were.

I think we're at Caesar's Palace back then. We probably had 10, 12,000 people that were between 8,000 and 10,000 people. That's a lot of energy. And when executives see that, it opens up their eyes and they look at the product much different. We're live here at 83 weeks.com and we just got a question from Yeti Master. He says, Eric, how important is NAPT, the convention today with the growth of streaming and fading terrestrial media? Do you think that convention is as important today or is it just different now, Eric, if you had to guess?

That's absolutely not as important now. And let's back up just a little bit because we talk about syndication cable network and we assume everybody that's listening understands it. syndication is there's different segments of the business or different ways of distributing content in the entertainment industry at one point again back in the 90s the 80s and the 90s especially syndication which is essentially creating a one-hour show because the formats for syndication are one-hour shows typically almost exclusively back then, you take your one hour show, you create a wrestling product, you give it a different

title. So, for example, in the case of WCW, we had WCW Saturday night. Let's talk pre-Nitra. We had WCW Saturday night. That was Saturday night, obviously. We had WCW main event, which was on TBS on Sunday nights at 605. And then we had one, two, three different shows that were syndicated shows, three different one-hour titles. So what we would do while we're producing WCW Saturday Night is there would be a match or two, maybe even three that weren't a part of the WCW Saturday Night Show, either they were taped before, after, whatever. We would shoot because you had an audience there, you had the ring set up and everything.

So you'd shoot a couple matches that were specifically for, the syndicated product. We would do the same thing for the Sunday night show. So while we're filming the cable version of both of those shows, we would also be filming matches that wouldn't air on those particular episodes. Those would be put into a vault and used to create the one-hour syndicated products. The one-hour shows were sold to local television stations. Sometimes they were network owned, an NBC affiliate, for example. Oftentimes, there were the independent show or independent television station in a given market because they didn't have the content that they could get from the network that

owned them. So they had to create or locate, purchase, lease, whatever you want to call it, syndicated product. So WCW, Rob Garner, who I believe started. out with Crockett. Rob Garner was our VP of syndication at WCW. So we would create these one-hour episodes. Rob's job then was to go out and distribute them to sell them to as many independent

television stations as they could. And again, it's probably different now. But the way things worked back then is we would take the syndicated network. And let's say if I don't remember how much. many stations we had in any given time. It's been a long time, and I wasn't directly involved. But let's say we had 100 different independent television stations around the country. Some of them in major markets, many of them not, any of them in smaller markets, they would call B or D markets. And we would add up the total penetration, meaning what

percentage of the U.S., let's take Hansville. So Rob Garvey, Garner's job would be to find out who is the most viewed station in Huntsville, whether it was a network affiliate or an independent, and go and try to sell WCW Pro, which was the show that I was hired to do color and play by play on when I first came in. That was the syndicated show. So job, Rob Garner's job was then to go to Huntsville, meet with the general manager, program director, usually the program director, and say, hey, look, here's our product. Here's how it's performing in other similar markets to yours, and here's what it cost you,

and hopefully close a deal with your local Huntsville Independent Television Station or network affiliate would then air that syndicated show on Saturday mornings. For example, Friday nights, doesn't matter. The deal typically was, at this point, was a barter, meaning your local, television station in Huntsville has six minutes of ad time. WCW would retain six minutes of ad time. So it was just, here's the show. We're not going to charge you for it because at that time you couldn't sell wrestling.

At best, you could do barters and trades because the appetite wasn't there for it. But you would put that show on your local Huntsville channel. let's say Huntsville represented 0.002% of the U.S. population. And here's the important part. It doesn't sound like it is. But one of the strategies for having syndication was that you want to have as close to 90 or 95% penetration as possible into the broad television market place. So of the 100% of people that have televisions in their home, your goal as a producer, as a producer,

is to have a large a portion of that 100% of available television households as you could possibly get. So what we would do, let's say our entire list of syndicated stations in our network, those people who are buying our one-hour versions of a wrestling product that have a different title than what they see on cable, if we added all those up, and it equaled 34% of the United States, as an example, we would then add that 34% to, or whatever the number was, I picked 34 out of Let's say 20%. We would take that 20% of geographical penetration that Nielsen verifies is reported by Nielsen.

We would add that to the footprint of whatever it was at the time that TBS represented. It might have been 60%. It might have been 70% at that time. I don't recall. But it certainly wasn't 100% and wasn't close to 90%. Keep in mind that TBS was still growing out of its regional superstation perception at that time. TBS in the 90s was still very much a regional cable outlet. Yes, it had national representation or national representation.

You could get it anywhere. But just because something is available in 90% of the U.S. doesn't mean 90% of the U.S. is going to watch it. So TBS at the time probably had about a 70% footprint. Again, I'm guessing, don't quote me. It doesn't fucking matter. I'm giving you an example. Not you, Conrad, but those listening.

We would take the 20% that syndication represents of the U.S., add it to whatever percentage TBS had at the time, let's for sake of discussion, say it was 60%. Now you go to an advertiser or an agency and say, say, I have a product that has penetration verified by Nielsen, based on this information, this product, when it airs, is going to include commercials, not only on WCW Saturday night, WCW main event, but because we own six minutes of the commercial inventory, we're also going to insert it in our syndicated network. So in effect, even though syndication only represents 20% of the US. And even though cable only at that time represented, for example, 60%,

the combined footprint is that 80 or 90%. And that's kind of the threshold that advertisers were looking for at that time. They weren't interested in advertising and a show that only had penetration in 50 or 60% of the U.S. They wanted as large a percentage of the audience watching their commercials as possible. So they kind of drew a line it. And it was arbitrary. in some cases, but they drew a line at 60 or 70%. So the reason we had syndication wasn't because it was such a moneymaker for us, but because it allowed us to aggregate our, our viewers footprint nationally and represent ourselves as a national product in terms of advertising.

Wow, that was a long-winded answer. I hope it made any sense at all. It was a great answer. And I want to remind everybody, boys and girls, spring is almost here. time to shake off those heavy layers and bust out those beautiful thighs gentlemen whether you're on spring break or heading to a backyard barbecue maybe playing around to golf or hey just delivering a podcast ad read chubbies has the style for any spring occasion with a variety of bright and comfortable polos and high quality thigh exposing shorts chubbies has the styles to fit

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chubbies. Go right now to chubbyshorts.com. So Eric, you know, we were talking a little bit about the different executives, that, hey, if you can find an executive who grew up a wrestling fan, they may get it. Do you remember in your day's pitching syndication finding an executive who didn't put on that they were a wrestling fan at first, but then eventually it revealed itself? I mean, we've all heard that conversation before about a wrestler sits down on first class on a plane and it comes out that, oh, yeah, I used to watch that stuff, but not anymore. So anyway, last week on Monday Night Raw, that's a common thing that exists in the world.

Did you run into that on the executive side when you were selling television? No. And keep in my, I didn't really, I wasn't on the sales side of WCW at all. I was. You were in the AWA, right? Initional talent, initially talent. And then as an executive, I oversaw, for example, Rob Garner certainly understood syndication because when I broke into the business, syndication was my only job.

Burn Ghania hired me because, and at the time, I do remember this, he had about 18 or 20 independent television stations around the upper Midwest because that was his territory. And he wanted to increase that because the more independent television stations, this goes back to the fundamental kind of revenue model of territory wrestling at the time. Let's go back. I get hired. I didn't even know what syndication was as it related to television. I had no idea what it meant. I get a call after an initial meeting with Vern and Mike Shields and a couple other people. And I get a call to come in because they wanted to talk to me about bringing

me in and hiring me. I had no intention of ever getting, I never even dreamed it was possible for me to get involved in television or wrestling business at that time. So I sit down on my chair Mike Shields, it was initially the person that I talked to about this, said, you know, really impressed with what you've done so far and we think that you would be great to take over syndication for AWA. I was excited about the prospect, even though I didn't know what it meant. It was sales. I'm, to me, sales is sales.

You have to learn your product and understand your market, but sales is sales. So I'm not, absolutely, Mike, I'd love that job. That would be awesome. I think I could do great, not even knowing what it was. And then after I took the job, Mike did a really, Mike Shields did a really good job of explaining how the business of television syndication works. He knew that I had to know and get a lay of the land. And as part of that learning about how syndication worked in the late 80s,

Mike Shields brought in a representative from Nielsen because Vern, AWA was a Nielsen subscriber. They just didn't lift the information. There was no online back in the day, but they just didn't find the information that Nielsen was putting out every week in terms of ratings and then steal it and use it like, you know, people do now on social media. The only way you could really get that information or any,

detail to that information, which is critical, is if you subscribe to the Nielsen service, which was very expensive. But you needed that information if, like in case of AWA, they handled all of their ad sales internally. They didn't have agents. They weren't dealing, you know, they were a regional company, regional territory. So all of their ad sales was done internally. And Mike Shields, who also used to work for Jerry Juret, by the way, I think doing the same thing was the guy who put together the ad sales network for AWA. And we needed that granular Nielsen information that's not provided to you like you see it today, just ratings and shares or viewers.

Back then it was rating and shares. Now it's just viewers and demos. The measurements have changed over time. But Mike brought in a representative from Nielsen who sat down with me for at least a full day. It might have been a day and a half and really walked me through the Nielsen process so that I could understand it from an ad sales perspective and do a decent job explaining. Which is why I always get a kick out of Dave Mouser for whatever reason he's camping out of the fact that I don't know how Nielsen worked. I got a fucking tutorial from an executive from Nielsen for a day or day and a half understanding how syndication really works.

In 1980, fucking seven, Dave, I didn't just read about it in a trade magazine and try to pretend I knew what I'm talking about, like some people do, Dave. So I got immersed into how Nielsen works, the ad sales side of things worked, which enabled me to sit down and talk to program directors or general managers and not just talk about, hey, wrestling is really cool.

And we got Barron Rasky and we've got here. I wasn't selling talent. I wasn't selling wrestling matches or anything that went on the side of the ring. I was selling the audience for professional wrestling and illustrating how it was much greater than most people perceived it to be and how it could benefit a local television network, especially as was the case in AWA. and the goal was to go into these local markets at least once a month and promote to the community. And then it engaged the audience with the local television station in a much different way.

Now, to answer your question, did I run across executives that were kind of closet wrestling fans? Generally not. Generally, the people that, and I more often than not, I was pitching to, program directors, not general managers. That was kind of the protocol. Occasionally, I'd get a general manager, but most of the time they were program programs. And in order for me to pitch AWA or the syndicated product, as it relates to this episode, I'd have to do what all salespeople have to do. I'd have to pick up a phone. I'd have to find out, well, first I'd have to find out who the program director was, get the

contact information, pick up a phone, because back then, there were no emails, it was old school, I think I had a push button phone at the time, I'm pretty sure I did, and sit in my office and call program directors two or three hours a day trying to set meetings. Generally, I wouldn't get a meeting unless that particular program director already had at least a lukewarm opinion about professional wrestling. I never had one that was a program director that said, oh, I hate that shit, but yeah, come on in and and pitch it. So usually it went in those initial conversations with a program director, if it started to get a little warm and you started feeling pretty good about it, you would

have conversations that reflected that that particular program director had some kind of positive relationship with wrestling. They weren't trying to hide it, right? They were generally at least lukewarm to it. Sometimes they were excited to get the phone call. They were excited about the opportunity. But more often than not, it was a lukewarm response, but warm enough to be interested in the numbers. And that's really all you're pitching as numbers.

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Visit bluechew.com for more digital. details and important safety information, and we thank Bluetooth for sponsoring the day's podcast. As a reminder, we are live right now on 83 weeks.com. This is your chance to ask Eric anything you want to. So fire those questions down. Travis Medway, who's been a member of our club here at 83 weeks.com for quite a while. I want to give him a shout out. He says, hey, Eric, here in the UK, we had Nitro replays on Friday nights on TNT. We could get TNT here on satellite. Was there no way of getting Nitro? live in the UK was that ever discussed that's an interesting question you and I've never talked

about that before it was never discussed I don't know if the technology at that point would even I don't even know if there was a way to do it at that point but no it it there was never discussion of trying to go live with nitro internationally I mean I don't know what time at night or in the morning that would have been I think there's about a six or eight hour difference between East Coast and U.K. time, Travis is. So, yeah, we would be going live at 1 o'clock in the morning. Even if it was technically possible, I'm not sure could convince anybody that it made sense.

Shout out to real Steve O. Wrestler, who's joining us here live at 83 weeks.com. It's nearly 4 o'clock in the afternoon there in Lisbon, Portugal. So shout out to Portugal joining us live here today, Eric. I love that. I want to go to Portugal someday. It's a beautiful place. We're going to talk a lot about selling wrestling on television, but we are going to answer those questions as they come in.

So silly as this is, Ryan A wants to know, Eric, why don't you push booty man Ed Leslie to the moon? Why did I or why didn't I? Why did you not? I mean, he may have been at Sarkade. He kind of did. I was forced into it. It wasn't by choice.

Hey, we've got a fun question here. that I want to ask you about because realistically you sold and I know that you know our topic of the show is about selling wrestling on television but you sold a lot of other TV shows non wrestling television and there were some wrestling adjacent things like Paul cogan's celebrity championship wrestling or Paul cogan's microchampionship wrestling or even wrestling with death which is maybe it's on show we need to talk about one day but you also sold other reality shows things like Scott Bayo shows or Hardcore Pond Chicago or Confessions of a Teen Idol. Was there a different approach to selling those to the television networks and the television

executives or is it simply just figuring out what they're in the mood to buy or how is it different selling something that's not wrestling versus it is wrestling? Are you really focusing on the wrestling fan base? Are you focusing on the genre, the affordability? Like what is the differentiator if that makes sense? sense about wrestling versus the other shows that you sold? Wrestling is just numbers in history. Keep in mind, I mean, people, some people, many people realize this, but for those that

don't, wrestling has always been one of the most popular genres, genres on television and local markets across the United States since the beginning of television time, going back to the mid-50s. I've gone through this before, and I won't go to great. detail here because we've covered it. But if you look at television before cable, before 70s, whenever cable became a thing, it was all syndication. It was all local wrestling on television, all driven by the territories. And the promoters would give that show to the local networks in exchange for a couple minutes of commercial inventory that the

promoters like Virgania could use to promote their live events in that market. So the wrestling shows that they produced and paid money to produce were nothing more than lost leaders to drive the revenue that the promoters would receive from ticket sales. That's it. That was the only revenue. This is before pay-per-view, you know, this is before big shows. This is just local old school territory wrestling. The only revenue was from ticket sales.

And wrestling back in the 50s and the 60s and pre-cable, if you go into Los Angeles, one of the most watched programs in Los Angeles was that show that the local channel or possibly networked for it got for free. They didn't even pay for it. They gave up a couple minutes of commercial ad time locally, which was nickels and dimes at the time. And they had a show that they got for free and generally,

not across the board, but generally outperformed anything else in that market. Didn't get the recognition for it, but it did. And then you look at cable. Wrestling was and still is one of the most successful forms of entertainment on cable television consistently. And out of cable was born pay-per-view. wrestling became one of the most successful forms of entertainment on pay-per-view. Now we're into a whole new world, right? But back in the day, and again, we're talking about two different types of content.

Wrestling content, you're selling numbers. You're just selling audience, knowing that a lot of the people that you were pitching to kind of didn't have a great taste in your mouth about professional wrestling. It was lowbrow. But if the numbers are right, that's what you focused on. Now, fast forward, now you're talking about selling shows that are non-wrestling shows, so to speak, even though there may be derivatives of wrestling. For example, Hulk Hooker's Celebrity Championship Wrestling wasn't a wrestling show.

It was a competition elimination format that was about wrestling. Wrestling was the backdrop. It was a competition elimination format. And when reality, non-scripted programming slash reality television became as popular as it did beginning in 2000s, your network executives and program, well, mostly network executives by that time because we were pitching to True TV, we were pitching to T&T, we were pitching, whatever, A&E, we did a lot of business with the A&E networks, Discover. networks. You're pitching formats. You're pitching concepts. So when, for example, we pitched

Hall Kogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling to Viacom, CMT, specifically, the network executives were, they were excited about having Hall Kogan because they knew that's something that you could promote. That was a brand that people were aware of. But what they were most excited about was the celebrity competition format, competition elimination format. Because competition elimination formats were the hot item. That's what every cable outlet wanted. They wanted their version of dancing with the stars, which is exactly how this show came about. Jason and I had a good friend. We still do. She's a wonderful lady. She's been out to the house here with kids visiting not all that long ago. Her name is Melanie Moreau. She was the network executive

at CMT. And we just had a great relationship with her. She was a really, really, really cool person down to earth. That's your typical LA network executive. And she loved wrestling, but the network was not interested in wrestling. They were, however, interested in a celebrity driven competition elimination format. And that's what we sold them. We couldn't sell them numbers. We used numbers for professional wrestling as an example of how big the audience and the appetite for wrestling was to support this competition elimination celebrity driven format. Again, long-winded way of saying, by the time of 2000s rolled around and Jason and I started

our own independent production company, we're pitching formats. We're not pitching matches for sure. We're pitching formats. What's the format du jour? You mentioned Chicago, hardcore Chicago Pond. The only reason that show was ever developed is because the market was demanding anything that was Pond related because there was successful. Pond Stars was a freaking hit.

Still is, I think. I don't know how many episodes of Pond Stars are. but that format was doing really, really well, like beyond well, record-breaking kind of revenue and numbers. So every other network cable outlet, every other cable outlet that was in the business of buying and distributing shows wanted their version of Pond Stars. So there was probably about six, eight, maybe even more variations of pawn stars. And that's what we were pitching. We're pitching a format. As time went on for Jason and I, we started together at about 2003, I think, 2002, 2003, whatever it was. And we did pretty

well right out of the shoot. At one point, we were probably regarded, not officially, but within the community, is one of the leading, not the largest, but one of the leading independent producers of non-scripted programming because we were smart we were pitching formats we were not pitching shows and over a period of time the appetite for competition elimination although it still exists to this day it still does well you don't see nearly as many of them as you did back in, say, 2006 or eight. There was just a plethora of competition elimination formats to the point where the audience got tired of them.

And then the formats evolve. And they turned into what's called in the industry, Doc follows, meaning documentary style following your central characters, whatever that may be. but shot in more of a documentary style with the drama and the story and the arts and the resolution and the conflicts and all of the elements that make a good documentary but you're literally following somebody throughout the course of a day to capture those elements that's a doc follow versus a straight documentary once the doc follows came about and

Oh, and oh, by the way, there's another category. I skipped over it. The Pondstar shows and all the different variations of them were considered a process format so that you're following people who were involved in a process that is inherently interesting to the audience and relatable. That's what Pond Stars is, and that's what it still is today. That's what it was, and that's what it still is today. It is a process, kind of a non-scripted process format versus a doc follow format, which is more about the drama of following somebody in unusual situations and capturing their emotions during that process.

So what Jason and I did effectively was shift our approach to the industry based on the appetite of the network. You've got to pitch them what they want to buy no matter how much we may feel. strongly about professional wrestling, if the market isn't interested in that at that time, you're going to figure out what they are interested in. And Hollywood, especially now, it's way different now than it was when I was in it full time. Hollywood has become more bureaucratic. It's more like a bank, more like dealing with a bank, an institution than it is

like dealing with a creative environment. Back when Jason and I, I'm going to give you one example. One of the first shows that Jason and I sold with our own production company was a show that Jason and I both pitched together to a guy by the name of Dean Valentine. Dean Valentine was the,

he was a president of the UPN network. They had SmackDown at that time. And they wanted testosterone-driven-driven content. That's what they were looking for. And that's what you have agents for because your agents around, they're knocking on doors every day. They're in meetings all day long. They know which way the wind is going to blow tomorrow before it starts blowing that way.

And they would report back to us and say, okay, this is what UPN is looking for. They're looking for men, 18 to 34, 18 to 49, or in some cases, they're looking for 50, 50 men women. But when they're talking to Jason and I, it's mostly because we kind of specialize in testosterone-driven male-dominated content. That was our niche. So we sat down with Dean Valentine. There was a restaurant right next to UPN headquarters. It was over on Wilshire Boulevard. There was a Mexican restaurant just down the street.

and Jason and I took one of our first meetings with Dean Valentine in this restaurant over lunch and we pitched him a show and I don't remember what we called the show at the time but it was essentially monster trucks meets professional wrestling we gave the trucks character the drivers all became characters and personalities it had a lot of the same kind of elements of professional wrestling but it was done in modified looking monster trucks they bought that show. Dean Valentine bought that show. We pitched it on a freaking bar napkin. Actually, there were several bar napkins over lunch and he made it, Dean made a decision within two days and purchased 10 episodes at $750,000 an episode. Think about that. We pitched a show on a

fucking bar napkin over lunch and sold 10 episodes could have been eight but it was 750,000 dollars an episode. A $7.5 million lunch napkin deal. Yep. That's pretty good. It's almost as good as magic spoon cereal. Listen, as a kid, I think we all pop down in front of the TV and watched them wrestling with a big bowl of

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Hey, so I want to ask you, Eric, when you remember, and I know you were working for Vern at the time, and you're sort of on the outside looking in, but we started to see some real more mainstream opportunities for wrestling, certainly with like the WWF and NBC. Broadcasting and cable, which was a magazine back in the day, highlighted some of the success from 1988 in some of these specials and they would show that and I can't believe this is real the February 5th 1988 show and yes that is the main event that's the prime time not Saturday night's main event this is the evil twin referee it did a 15.2 rating Eric and while that sounds monster what's more impressive to me is it was a 25 share and the way it's been

explain to me is that's the percentage of people watching television that are watching your program. So if there were, and there weren't, but if there were a hundred million people watching television here, Eric, 25 million of them were watching this program. So one in four television sets was watching this. It was unbelievable. It beat Beauty and the Beast on CBS. It beat ABC's comedies. I mean, it was a home run. But when they asked NBC, they said, we're pleased with the public response as reflected in the ratings, and we're not closing the door on future telecasts, but we have no immediate plans.

And a spokesman said that a weekly series was very unlikely. I find that fascinating to me. Like, Eric, when you see something that hits this hard, one in four television sets are watching your program. And we know that compared to some other content that's out there, wrestling is relatively affordable to produce. Why wouldn't someone jump at that opportunity, Eric? Why wouldn't you, do they think that, hey, it's like Las Vegas is good, but in small doses?

What do you make of this? Stigma. They couldn't sell it. It doesn't matter how many people watch it if you can't figure out a way to sell it. And the stigma, not only with network executives at the time, but with advertisers and the agencies. You know, I beat on this a lot. I mean, I've talked about this a lot.

But it's important that people watching here on YouTube or listening understand the relationships in the process. You have a client, let's say General Motors, and they want to spend $100 million dollars promoting a new vehicle the ad agency that represents general motors their responsibility is to say okay we've got a hundred million dollars of our client's money that we are going to spend on their behalf and it's going to be analyzed to death that agency may or may not retain their relationship with that client based on the return on investment that general motors can see and track.

So the agency is under a tremendous amount of pressure to maximize that $100 million. If they want to get that commission, that 15% commission on $100 million again next year, they better deliver on that $100 million this year. And it's going to be analyzed by the client to death. That's pressure. So your ad salespeople knowing that they have to get a return on investment are going to look at the landscape of opportunity that's in front of them and make a judgment based on performance and numbers, certainly,

but also on perception. They have to because if their client sees that commercial airing on a product that for whatever reason, the client or the executives within that client's company look at and go, why in the fuck is my new car commercial on a wrestling show because wrestling fans don't have any money because they're low budget. They live in trailer homes. They don't pay their bills. They don't brush their teeth.

All of the stigma that has been associated, that's an exaggeration, but not much, not by much. in reality back in the 80s and in the 90s. The perception of who the wrestling audience was, first of all, it was wrong, as we've clearly learned, and as networks and cable outlets have learned over the years, but the perception back then was not wrestling,

we're just this far off of porn. No client wants to see their product in a television show that they feel is beneath them. That's the best way to say it. And most everybody collectively felt like wrestling was such a low rent product that there was a stigma attached that prevented clients and agencies from actually taking advantage of the audience. So it would just get rejected. And I'm guessing, it's not even a guess. I would bet a lot of money that the reason, despite the 25 share and the incredible ratings that those shows got,

their salespeople were scared to death of it because they didn't think they could sell it. and even if they did, it wasn't the audience the client was looking for. It's very subjective. It's not just numbers. There's some subjectivity to it as well. And the ad agencies that are responsible for buying, sponsoring television shows have to be sensitive to that subjectivity and the impression or perception that their client has of a product. let's talk a little bit about perception because i do realize that what we're talking about

is advertising and and really that's the name of the game for television and i know that some of our listeners you know that hasn't always clicked but there is a negative perception around a lot of other things besides just wrestling for instance our buddy cassio kidd is the morning show host on a rock station in huntsville eric it's called rocket 95 5.1. The call letters are WRTT if you're a radio junkie. But there was a perception in the local community that all the people who listen to the rocket are just tattoos and wallet chains. It's not our demo. That was the sort of conversation I heard. Even when I was buying other stations in the market, that's what they would tell me. Oh, nobody listening to the rocket

owns a home. And I'm, what? What? What? I mean, the reality is, is, you know, this is maybe even 10, 15 years ago when I first, I guess it was probably 15 years ago. Yeah, it was. It was 2009, 2009 when I started buying radio. But at that time, technically things like Nirvana and Metallica, those were considered like classic rock at that point. If you just looked at how much time had passed and now they might even be considered an oldie. But I was doing loans for people who listened to the rocket who drove a Porsche 9-11 and they were a doctor at Huntsville Hospital, but they listened to the rocket and the rocket only because that's what they were listening to when they were in college.

And they grew up on that and they had the posters and they went to the concerts. And everybody, in my opinion, has like that 10 years where they're at their most formative. I'm going to listen and enjoy this music for the rest of my life. I'm always going to have a fondness for these TV shows, these movies and professional wrestling. I mean, I'm saying whatever we grew up on in those 10 years, I think that pulls an emotional lever in all of us. But I'm saying all that to say, there was a perception that the audience wasn't there. So it is difficult to sell.

And I've seen that in wrestling. I've bought wrestling ads, or ads inside of wrestling, rather, to promote my mortgage company. And man, like Fox, where it had a big rating for Smackdown, that would cost a fractionary of what golf would on the weekends. And the golf stuff didn't have near the audience. but the perception of that demographic that's watching, that's where the money is. I'm saying all of that to say, has that changed now? Nonsense McGee is with us here live, and he asks a great question. He wants to know, what in your opinion is the next big shift in streaming content?

Consolidation seems likely, so will that affect the typical type of entertainment we see prevalent now? But even said a little differently, Eric, from an advertising perspective, if you're on an app, you're no longer necessarily prioritizing selling three commercials in a stop set or what have you. Now we're trying to hope that we can appeal to a paying audience going instead of B to B, to B, if that makes sense, we're going B to C. So instead of us trying to sell you on advertising your business on our content, now we're trying to see if we can sell wrestling as a subscription service directly to the consumer.

that's happening right now. Do you think that there's going to be a further evolution or my off base in all of this? No, I absolutely look, everything evolves. Every freaking thing evolves. And certainly entertainment, including television of movies, has evolved rapidly. And it's going to continue to evolve in terms of where is it going to go? No idea. I'm not in the business on a day-to-day.

full-time basis, so it's hard to get a feel for where things are going, where the puck is going, as Gwen Gretzky would say. But I think if you just step back and look at the world of entertainment and look at what's happened over the last 30 years, it can be summed up pretty quickly and clearly by vertical integration, meaning big companies keep buying smaller companies and there's fewer companies available, which is another reason why the industry has become so much like dealing with an institution as opposed to dealing in the entertainment business. And I don't want to keep going back to this,

but the culture, this is an important part of this, because it's all about perception, right, and evolution. The culture within a television, within Hollywood, while I was there. And when I say there, I mean, I had an apartment in Santa Monica. I was there three or four days a week. I'd fly home for a couple days, fly back to L.A. Or Lori would fly from Scottsdale where we live.

She'd come out and stay with me for a week while Jason and I were there working. Jason lived in L.A. at the time. So I was not a full-time resident of Hollywood, but a almost time. During that period when I was in Hollywood working full-time, it was a fun environment because the industry was still driven primarily by creative. People were looking for the next big idea. People were looking for an opportunity to do something different than. people were looking for content that creatively would kind of break the mold,

meaning the industry from my perspective at that time was driven by creative people. Now it's his, because of vertical integration, because there's fewer companies out there, because the margins have become, have been crushed. That's a whole other conversation. I won't go into it here. We'll be here until tomorrow.

But because of vertical integration, number one, because of the risk involved in producing television, because it is very expensive to produce television, the decision makers within Hollywood are not driven by creative. They're driven by numbers. It has become a very, risk adverse industry a lot of reasons network executives on the ad sales side of things debt service they're scared to death yes every one of them are job scared

Jason and I, when we saw it happening, we were there and active in the industry up until 2000, really 15 or 16, we saw the handwriting on the wall. We saw independent production companies like Bischoff Herbie Entertainment, very well respected, very successful. I say this all the time, not to brag, just to put things in context. I made far more money as an independent television producer in Hollywood than I ever made working for Turner Broadcasting and WWE combined. Financially, I made a lot more money.

But over the last few years of that, both Jason and I were looking around and we're going, wait a minute, our buddies over here that have this production company, they just got snatched up by a bigger company. That company just got bought out by Viacom, for example. We saw small independent companies like ours, getting gobbled up by bigger production entities or, in some cases, studios and networks. Unfortunately, well, it was a decision on our part, conscious decision.

I don't regret it. We had that opportunity to get gobbled up. We could have done what everybody else was doing. But I had no desire to work in a corporate environment. I loved working in Hollywood with Jason when things were driven by creative executives and by people willing to take risks and stand by the risks they took and see them through. Fast forward to about 2012, maybe 2011, is when all of that changed. margins started getting crushed,

couldn't make as much money even if you sold a show. Networks were demanding that in order to even pitch an idea, we had to have a fully blown out, meaning pretty significant pitch deck. And if we got the pitch deck and we got some interest in the deck, we might get a meeting. But if we got a meeting, because somebody was interested in the idea that they saw on the deck,

now we have to have a sizzle reel, which, you know, five minutes, seven minutes, actually about $8 to $10,000 to produce a good one. Because, by the way, you don't want to pitch a shitty sizzle reel. You don't want to pitch it on your, you don't want to shoot it on your fucking iPhone, because now you're presenting your production capabilities, your take on that.

So it's got to look good. It's only five to seven minutes, but it's got to look great. Well, that five to seven minutes is going to cost you a minimum about eight to ten, sometimes more, $12,000, depending on what you're pitching. So in order to get a meeting to possibly pitch a show, now I've got to reach it in my back pocket, or in this case, Jason and I had to reach in our back pockets, and put $10,000 on a table to roll the dice.

That never happened. when we started. It was never a requisite to pitch a show that you had a sizzle reel. Let's say you get past the sizzle reel phase. Now they want to see a casting tape. Okay, I like your idea, but we want to see who's in it, because as everybody knows, it's the characters and the stories that drive any form of entertainment. So no matter how good the idea is on paper, how unique it is, how well it's structured, all the other bullshit that you can, hey, Larry, how you doing? All the other bullshit that goes into pitch and show, now you've got to go out and cast it. There's another five to seven

grand. So you're in $20,000 before you even sit down in front of a decision maker. Because up until that point, you're pitching underlings, right? You're pitching the people you've got to pitch in order to get to the person that's actually going to try to make a decision. So now you're $20,000 in, and let's say we're successful. We sell a show. We sold a lot of shows, by the way, a lot of shows. In the beginning, when Jason and I would sell a show, you would get a 10% executive producer fee because we created the show.

It was something we sat down, a couple beers and a piece of pizza, and we said, hey, what if we do this? And we just create a show of our imaginations, and we pitch it. And usually probably out of 10 pitches, we'd sell three shows. I was probably close to our average at the time. The good news is, if we sold the show, let's say, I'm not going to use the UPN show as an example, but let's say Polko Good Celebrity Championship Wrestling, another show, $750,000 an episode. was the price tag for that show.

So Jason and I would get 10% of the budget as an executive producer fee. So we're each, we're splitting $75,000 an episode. Decent money. And we're going to get rich doing it, unless you have a lot of volume. But where we really made our money is we actually physically produced the show. We had cameramen that worked for us. We had our own edit facilities, which was a significant edit facility, by the way. It was cutting edge at that time or that type of programming.

But we invested in that equipment. We had, and they were all freelancers. It's not like these people work for us full time. So we would, we had probably three or four, we'll call them full time members of Bishop Hervey Entertainment, but when we'd sell a show, 95% of the staff on that show were freelancers. So we would expand our post-production facilities as needed and then contract them as necessary. But because we were physically producing the show ourselves, meaning we weren't hiring a third party to do it and they're making their margins, we produced it ourselves hands-on

during the whole edit process until we delivered the show. But because we did that, we also saw about a 20% margin across all the budget line items that go into producing a show. We'd mark because we would hire the freelancers, we would get a cost from them to do the work we needed them to do, and then we would mark that up by 10 or 20% and included in the budget. So we were making 10% of the total budget right off the top, and then making another margin, we're going to call it 10% for this conversation on all of the production line items that go into delivering that show, which usually exceeded the 10% executive producer fee. So in a case of that show, for example, I couldn't testify this at court. I mean,

the 10% executive producer fee I could because that's standard in the industry. That's what everybody gets who sells a show if you bring it in. But the below the line service, services, meaning everything that happens backstage, so to speak, in the production of that show, we were also collecting a margin on. So that show, for example, in our Hulk Hogan Celebrity Championship Wrestling, we weren't splitting, splitting $75,000 a year, or $75,000 in episode, you were splitting probably more like $150,000 to $200,000 an episode. Fast forward,

you can no longer, it's, well, you can, if you are really, really big production company and you have a lot of leverage, which we did not have, you can still make money getting a margin on the production of the show, but the network has the right to audit. So in other words, they're going to do everything they can to prevent you from making money on both apps. Again, if you're a big, big studio production company and you've got leverage, you're going to be able to get away with it in some cases. But if you're a small independent producer, they're going through your shit with a microscope and making sure you're not making margins on anything other than your EP fee. Well, the minute that happened, our ability to

make money was diminished by probably 60 or 70%. And we had to be at risk for anywhere between $10,000 or $20,000 just to get an opportunity to pitch a show. So if you combine the margin disaster, the reduction of margins, profit margins, and then you add to the reduction of margins, the increased risk of being money out of pocket just to pitch a show, it got to the point where Jason and I looked at each other and said, look, we're not big enough to command the kind of respect that allows us to make money on the below the line items that we had been because now people are going through that like bankers would or worse than that, like the IRS would.

Yeah, more like the IRS at a bank. So now our below-the-line costs are being scrutinized to the point where we can't make any money anymore on that. The EP fees, which used to be good because it used to be able to sell. We sold a lot of shows. We only sold two, I think, at $750 an episode. But a lot of the shows that we did sell were coming in at $450, $500, $550, sometimes as low as $300. Those were down and dirty shows like Chicago Pond. I could literally shoot that on an iPhone.

The requirements for that show weren't very high, and it was an easy show to produce. So we could produce that for $300,000 an episode, pick up $30,000 off the top and make enough money under the below the line that it was still worth our while. It's not anymore. Now you're still at risk.

You've got to jump through flaming, fucking hoops to sell a show because everybody's scared to death. Nobody wants to make a bad decision when it comes to programming. That's why network executives are job scared. Jason and I, starting at around 2010, 12, when we first started seeing this, it's like, dude, we're not pitching the person. We're pitching the share because who's ever in that chair today probably won't be there six months from that or a year.

And it's even worse today. all because, again, vertical integration, fewer companies, fewer independent producers, networks, Biacom, for example, I keep using them. Now, they're analyzing things much like the IRS, they're risk adverse, that executives in that company that are part of that process are scared to death because they know they're going to lose their jobs at some point. they're just hoping they make enough money and get enough stock options to make it worth a while before they get shown the door.

So their level of their appetite for breaking the mold or coming out with something new, that's fucking gone. That ship's sailed. Now, if you're, like I said, if you're, for example, A Mark Burnett, Mark isn't really that active in the business anymore, but when he was, or a very dear friend of mine by the name of Tom Beers, who owned a company called Original Productions. original productions he is the he top beers i used to work with him at turner he was in charge of national geographic he went off and created his own company called original productions you know

monster garage you know ice road truckers all of the fishing shows that you see on tv so when i say fishing shows i mean like the crab shows and all the really dramatic you know scary looking shit that's all tom beers tom beers invented that category and i talked to tom a couple of years ago, we were working on a project together. It was only a year and a half ago, two years ago. And Tom said, Eric, now, Tom, you know, he's been traveling the world for the last three years. He's made millions of millions of dollars. But he made it fortune. He killed it. And about a year and a half ago, we were working on a project together. And he said, Eric, to be honest with you, If I had to start today, knowing everything that I've learned, having all of the success

that I've had, if I had to start today, I couldn't make it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't replicate the success I had back then in today's world because of everything that I just described to you. Vertical integration, reduction of margins, fear of risk. All of that has added up to really a difficult environment for, the independent television producers to even try to make a living. I want to mention, you know, I spoke briefly earlier about buying radio and buying television.

I started doing that back in 2009. And that's when I knew, like, you know, people are starting to consume things differently. Certainly, I bought radio and I bought TV and I bought Billboard. But I knew that, you know, the internet is where people are consuming more content. I mean, satellite radio is the thing and YouTube is on the rise. So when I wanted to start advertising digitally, Eric, I just did what I've always done. I talked to my radio rep. I talked to my TV rep and they're like, oh, we've got a guy.

We do this. We can help you. It didn't work. And then I found my man over at Envision. I can't shout out Eric Nichols enough. He's my guy. So much so that if you're a small business owner and you want to promote your business and you want to grow your business, use my.

guy go to conrad's guy.com because he really showed me exactly how to do this and i'm talking SEO pay per click targeted display streaming video on hulu on youtube even amazon ads if your company is doing any of that i want you to not pay the stupid tax i had to go right now to conrad's guy dot com and let my man eric take a look these guys have decades of experience but most importantly I trust that they're staying on top of the technology. They're optimizing my campaigns because technology changes all the time. And I'm talking to you if you sell B2B or your retail or food and beverage, manufacturing, non-profits, yes, even mortgages.

Eric did it for me and he can do it for you to. Go right now to Conrad's guy.com. And here's what's great about Eric. If he and his team take a look and they say, we're not sure that we can really help him. We think you're on the right track. they'll tell you that but trust me it's worth the time and the peace of mind if they do half as good for you as they have for me you'll see why i tell everybody to go to my digital marketing

guy it's conrad's guy.com he's eric nichols at envision and it really works go check it out conrad's guy dot com if you're a small business owner like a life hack check it out conrad's guy Eric let's get in the weeds a little bit you know let's go back we know that you really started your venture into wrestling trying to sell syndication and we know that it evolves and one of the evolutions that wwee did once upon a time they did most of their television in really small buildings like the kipsy if you've seen that old w wf stuff you know what i'm talking about but then they made the switch and they started going on the road and it's certainly felt bigger when they were no longer in the smaller buildings and now they're in

the larger arenas the lighting is different it just has a bigger feel how important do you think this is from a perception standpoint to television executives kind of this is one of the reason you know people have i've been criticized a lot because i really want a t and a to take their show on the road. I wanted them to be in bigger buildings for that very reason, perception. Not only amongst the advertising world, not only among program directors or network heads or studio heads, but for the audience, perception is so important.

And the reason that I believe so strongly in moving, for example, TNA, and I was, I was a loud, it wasn't my decision. I didn't have any executive decision-making powers. Let me make this clear. Janet, Janice Carter ran TNA. The decisions regarding the major decisions regarding TNA were done by Janice Carter. Dixie was in the middle, and this is not to say anything disparaging, really about either one of them. Dixie really wanted to grow T&A. Dixie understood eventually the need to do exactly what WWF did back in the day

is to play larger buildings because it changes the perception not only of the networks you're working with, but of the audiences at home. If the audience at home feels like they're spending an hour or two watching something that is really not that important or significant, they're not as likely to stick with it over any length of time. They'll look for something else that feels bigger and more interesting. And the smaller your audiences, the less significant you feel. So one of the, you know, and one of my ears, I've got Dixie and she's excited about growing T&A.

It's why she brought in Hulk Cogan. It's why she brought in Rick Flair. It's why she brought in Kurt Engel. It's why she brought in Booker T. It's why she brought in Dusty Roads. It's why she brought in Kevin Nash. It's why she brought in Scott. Oh, no, by the way.

And Jeff Hardy. All of that happened before I showed up. It's living Hulk Hogan, obviously. So Dixie was trying to add talent to the roster that would grow the audience, but the audience would not grow regardless of who the talent was because the show felt small and insignificant because it was shot inside of a soundstage. I more or less invented that shit soundstage with worldwide syndicated show that we did for TBS, WCW.

I'm not saying nobody else had ever done it before, but not the way we did. So I understood the need to take advantage of economies of scale that come along with shooting in the sound stage. In the long run, it's much less expensive. But the perception you create with it is small. The problem with the challenge that Dixie, had because she was dependent upon her mother for funding, because that's where the money came from to fund that company.

Janice was not, she wasn't going to invest any money any more than she had already committed to. She wouldn't say, all right, I get it. We're probably going to lose money taking our show on the road for six months or for maybe a year because it takes that long to gain some momentum. You're not going to gain momentum overnight. This is the frustrating thing. And again, I'm spending a lot of time on TNA because it's just such a good example of the question you asked.

Yeah, you can save a lot of money shooting at a soundstage at Universal Studios, but your show will never be anything other than what it is because there's no momentum. There's no excitement. There's no growth. And I didn't give a buck then and give even less of a fuck now what the action is. Because until you can change the perception of the product, the action inside of the ring is not going to do it for you, no matter how good it is, no matter who's doing it. If it feels small to the audience, to your television audience, because you're playing in front of 350 people or 500 people or 600 people, it's not going to matter. and had TNA made the commitment to stick with the show on the road concept for six months or a

year, yeah, they would have lost some money, but they also would have built their brand by presenting something that felt more credible, more exciting, more compelling by virtue of the fact there's just three, four, five, ten, fifteen thousand people sitting. they're validating that. It just doesn't work. So yes, I think when WWF decided we're going to play bigger arenas, we're going to prove to the audience, and we're going to give them permission to become a fan,

because they can see how many other people are fans. And they're going to feel comfortable becoming a fan of this. They're going to be excited to see those big crowds. That's why wrestling is getting the numbers in terms of, license fees it's getting today because it's one of the few products you can put on television that'll put, at least in WWE's case, 10, 15, 20, 50, 80,000 people in an arena. That's fucking excitement. I don't care if you're watching fleas fucking in the middle of the ring.

If you're watching fleas fuck in front of 25,000 people who are cheering, you're going to become a flea fucking fan. It just is. It's human nature. And WWF knew that. Vince McMahon, which is one of the reasons why I think he's, you can have whatever feelings you have about him on a personal level, but on a business level, he was a visionary and he knew something, Verganya didn't know, Bill Watts didn't know, Bob Geigel didn't know, Jerry

Jarrett didn't know, all the guys who had come up within that regional territory system where it was all about ticket sales and didn't have any idea about brand building this, necessarily because they didn't need to. It's not because they weren't smart. That was the world they lived in at that time. Vince saw something different. That's where the vision comes in. Anybody can do what works today.

Just look at what the guy next year is doing, figure out a way to do it a little bit better, and then go do that. That's not vision. Vision is looking at the guy that's doing something. He's having some success and you having the ability to go, huh, that's working pretty well. How can I blow that up times 10?

I'm going to make that 10 times bigger than what he's doing. And then having the vision and the ability to execute to do it. That's why what Vince did was so important. This one thing we're talking about right now, going from the small sound stage, which everybody else was doing, including Vince's dad, right, the most part, smaller, smaller venues, typical regional wrestling production, Vince went, I want wrestling to feel like football. I want it to be mainstream.

I want it to be bigger than professional wrestling. Of course, Vince has got a lot of heat for that kind of philosophy over the years. And people would say, oh, he doesn't like professional wrestling. Bullshit. It's not that he didn't like professional wrestling. It's that his vision for what professional wrestling should be and could be. And, oh, by the way, is, was way different than everybody else's. That's vision.

And pointing out what you just did about that move, I think really illustrates. step. It was an important move that changed the industry in more ways than people give it credit for. Every now and again, we all get an idea, and sometimes we come across an idea and we want to know, hey, is the person who had that idea, are they high? Let's be real. In 2025, it's all about change, whether it's your work or your personal stuff or just the daily grind. It can be hard to keep up, but here's the deal. When things get get hectic. You don't have to go through it alone. I want you to embrace the power of nature and elevate your everyday with Vaya. Trusted by over half a million happy customers,

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you and enhance your everyday with Vaya. Now, one of these crazy ideas, Eric, I want to ask you about. Now, we're going to have to get in our way back machine, but that's what this show's all about is nostalgia. And once upon a time, man, and this feels like a hundred years ago now, shows like Roller games and the American gladiators. Maybe we'll call them junk sports. But to a little kid like me, it felt like another type of pro wrestling.

It's another competition show with these crazy over-the-top characters, and they were dominating syndication in the late 80s. And according to the reports I've seen out there from people like Steve Beverly, there was a syndicator name, am I saying this right? Bob Sires, do you remember that name, Eric? Yeah, Bob Sears was also, he worked very closely with Mike Shields. He also worked very closely with the various advertising agencies. Yeah, Bob, Bob, Bob, I think I met Bob once or twice, but I think he lived in Chicago

out of Minneapolis, but yeah, he was very active in syndication and, and in ad sales. So allegedly, he comes up with this idea for Vern Ghanion in the AA. Now, remember the context. Vince McMahon is dominating with the World Wrestling Federation. The Crockets have gone belly up and sold to Ted Turner. Byrne's still hanging on, and he's looking for a new hit. But all of his big talent, I shouldn't say all, most of his big talent has gone to work for Vince McMahon.

And Vern is going to watch something that we saw a few years ago because WWE released it. It's on their hidden gym section. It was the team challenge series. is the idea that Bob had here for this to sort of lean in and leverage the success of American Gladiators and the success of roller games and maybe try to present this as not, quote, unquote, just wrestling. It's a little different.

What did you think of the strategy then and what do you think of the strategy now? I wasn't involved in any of those conversations between, I mean, this is the first, that I'm hearing that it was Bob Sire's idea, initially. I mean, it very well could have bet because I just, you know, I wasn't in those meetings. Vern didn't share details of any of these things with me. I was basically a grunt laborer. And Vern didn't really want me too close to the, not that he didn't want me, but he didn't feel the need to have someone like me at that time with very little experience

and no reason to think that I had any unique insider. perspective. So I wasn't a part of it. It makes sense as you lay it out, looking at the timing of it, because American gladiars came on strong. When I got to WCW as an example, I remember sitting at a meeting and I think it was Sharon Sadello, along with Rob Garner, who called the meeting and discuss the landscape of television from their point of view. Sharon was, I think she was VP of marketing at the time, oversaw paper views and a lot of other things. Rob Gardner was obviously syndication as we discussed.

And they're, I'm going to reduce it down, but essentially they felt like wrestling was dead and shows like American gladiators were eventually going to replace professional wrestling on television. I didn't necessarily agree or disagree. I was just there to listen. I wasn't really a part of management at the time, so I didn't really speak up or anything. Didn't give it a whole lot of thought.

But I remember that conversation. American gladiators was so successful in syndication. They dominated it in many ways that the perception among some in the industry, the insurance of Delano Rob Gardner, is it, wrestling's dead. Ain't coming back. It's going away.

And it's easy to understand how someone like Bob Sires, who was watching the landscape of syndicated television, watching the growth of America gladiators and the dominance in syndication, would have had a conversation with someone like Vern who only made his money off syndication, because he had the syndicated show and he would combine that with ESPN. Remember when I talked about aggregating numbers, your syndicated audience with your ESPN audience. Back during the time we're talking about, Bern had ESPN,

which at that time represented a large penetration into the market. And he combined his syndicated network with his ESPN network to be able to have Bob Sires go out and sell companies. For example, Eminem Mars was one of our consistent advertisers with an AWA. Well, Eminem Mars was just buying eyeballs. They didn't give a damn who was watching it. They could care less about demographic. all they cared about was a gross number, meaning the total number.

Didn't care of it was men, women, didn't matter. As long as they were human, they were drawing breath. They were called opportunistic buyers. They had, for example, they would buy at, this is just an example, $5 a thousand. Whereas people that were buying specific programming for demos, for example, might be paying $25,000, a thousand. They were bottom feeders. And that's what Vern had.

He had a lot of bottom feeders or several bottom feeders like Eminemars. It's like M&MRs. There's only like you sell candy bars to adults, kids, it doesn't matter. They could care less. He just couldn't make much money off of them. So I could see a scenario where Bob Sears came to him and said, hey, you need to do something like gladiators only with wrestlers. And Vern was a very, you know,

But Vern was stubborn in a lot of ways, but Vern was in some ways, in some ways Vern had his own vision. Example, I remember before I left AWA, Byrne was so excited about an idea called American Sumo. Sounds silly and on surface, but Vern's angle on it was, let's get, former NFL players let's get whoever big tough strong guys and put them in matches that are essentially a variation of Japanese sumo wrestling I'm not saying whether the idea was a good idea or bad idea at the time it was a pretty progressive idea and I think if I had gotten involved with it a little bit. I mean, now, you know, I didn't have the perspective that I have today back in

1989, for example, in 1990, but it's an idea that could work. It would be difficult to make it work. You'd have to bring a lot of unique elements to the table because just watching two guys banging each other in a sumo ring is not necessarily compelling television, but there are ways to make it compelling, and it would have been fun. That's an example of, you know, I often talk about how stubborn and said in his ways Vern was. And he really was. But there was also a part of him that was willing to try things. And I think the team challenge service, or team challenge series, whether it was Sire's idea or Verne's idea or Greg's idea, I've heard Greg take credit for it too a lot. And I ended up getting blamed for

it more than anything. It's like, oh, Bishop, I was famous for the team challenge series. I didn't fucking anything to do with that. But I get credit or not so much for it. But I can see why Verne did it. He was adjusting to the evolution of the audience. We know that eventually when Vern goes under, you find yourself working with WCW, and one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is WCW used to have an initiative that I guess started back with Jim Crockett promotions, TWN, the wrestling network, and they used this as a syndicated package. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is

TWN, the wrestling network, would often sell programming through Action Media Group. That's who would help with some of the inventory as far as as ad sales goes. But they also represented Jerry

Jarrett in the USWA. So I guess what I'm trying to get to is, did you think it was a conflict of interest back then, or would you think it is now for a company like Action Media Group to be selling ad sales for WCW and the USWA because if you were watching both of those programs back then, let's say you're in the Memphis area or you just got syndicated

USWA TV in your market, you may have seen the same commercials on WCW programming that you saw on USWA programming. And listen, I get that because if I, the advertiser, think that, hey, this is the right genre and this will work, I could also see it from actually. action media group, we're thinking, hey, we'll keep them together and we'll bring down the cost per point. Because I imagine the USWA was much more affordable than WCW was, but from a WCW executive position, would you have ever allowed this for an ad sales group to represent you and a respectfully smaller wrestling organization? Sure. It wouldn't matter. I could kill us today or them because the audience isn't going to go.

Wow, that's weird. WCW has got a penzoil out and so does USWA. Nobody's going to care or even. I didn't mean that, Eric, I'm saying, let me play devil's advocate for my question. If I'm the ad buyer and I really want to buy WCW, but maybe it's just not affordable and it's out of reach, okay, I can try the USWA for less. Said differently, a lazy salesperson, if they get a price objection for WCW, they could just as easily slide them to USWA offer, take the low hanging fruit, become an order taker,

and get back on the street. Except for the advertiser isn't going to want USWA because USWA didn't have any penetration. It had a very, very small television footprint. It wasn't nearly as big of a footprint, for example, as WCW was. But the reason, I wasn't a part of that deal, but the reason if I was able to put myself back in that moment or recreate the exact same conditions today based on what I've learned and what I've

know over the last 30 years, I still would not have objected to it because at the time, keep in mind, Rob, it was a necessity. It wasn't, it wasn't even, we didn't have the luxury of a choice because we had to, we, WCW, again, keep in mind, we're selling raw numbers. We weren't selling demos or product or brand. Action Media Sports and Bob Sires were selling to the bottom feeders. That's who their clients were, bottom feeders, low CPMs, opportunistic buyers or advertisers, I should say. And they were buying gross numbers, tonnage.

and in order for WCW to participate in that sale. So let's, I'll give you an example. WCW delivers 50 million viewers nationwide, just enough. Aggregated Saturday night, Sunday, all three syndicated shows equals, let's just say 50 million viewers. USWA delivers 20 million. Combined, that's a 70 million viewer audience or package that Action Media Sports or Bob Sires gets to go sell to someone who doesn't give two shits where those numbers come from as long as they're verifiable.

So Action Sports sells to Eminem Mars, the combination of WCW and USWA, selling gross numbers tonnage. And when that sales goes through, WCW receives 70% of that revenue. USWA receives 20% of that revenue. The truth is, unless we hit that 70 million number, the tonnage number, WCW is going to receive nothing because the buyer doesn't want anything less than 70 million or 80 million or 60 million, whatever the gross tonnage number is. needed that gross tonnage number to be able to sell that product, be able to sell that advertiser, and then WCW received revenue based on our contribution to that aggregate number.

That's just how it had to work back in that day, because WCW wasn't big enough. WWF dominated syndication. WWF did a bricker great job in syndication. They were a decade ahead of WCW once I got there. So we were playing catch up in an order for us to create revenue for the company, which was critically important because WCW had never made any money up until that point. They were losing five, six, eight, ten million dollars a year.

So they had to create revenue or accept revenue anywhere there could, including an aggregate of USWA, Jerry Jarrett and WCW because we didn't have enough numbers on our own to get the job done. well i tell you who can get the job done that's our friends over at rocket money it's the start of a new year for a lot of us and this is a perfect time to get organized and set goals and prioritize what matters most and for me priority has always been financial wellness and that does feel more important than ever and with rocket money our goals feel more achievable they show us all of our subscriptions right in one place and they can help me easily cancel

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Is that fair to say? 100%. 100%. We know that happens again with Hulk Hogan. He is the big brand in wrestling. So that has to help. And I'm asking you, and Hulk won't hear this so you can tell the truth and nothing but the truth. So help you God.

What mattered most do you think to advertisers, to television executives? Was it a bigger deal to have the Disney Association or the Hulk Hogan Association? Not even close, Hulk. Okay. Disney helped. Disney helped overcome the stigma of the WCW Small Little regional wrestling promotion, that helped greatly. Paul Kogan changed everything.

And I say that because I was involved in a lot of the discussions, you know, with advertisers. I was in Napi. I showed up there with Rob Garner. I had a presence there. I talked to a lot of the buyers. And, yeah, they'd acknowledge, oh, it's cool. You're Disney. It makes it a little easier selling advertising for Disney.

you know, themed product than it surely does for we're coming to you live from Gainesville, Georgia. I mean, no offense to Gainesville. But yeah, Disney helped. Hogan changed everything. I want to ask you a little bit about the split focus. And I don't know that you and I've ever talked about this,

but I've always wondered. And we've talked about it a lot here on the program. By the way, we're live at 83 weeks.com. So if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button, turn on your notifications. bell, you can be interactive with Eric every time we're live. But if you hit that notification spell, it's going to give you a push notification on your phone and let you know, hey, you can talk to Eric Bischoff right now.

But I wanted to ask you, Eric, it's a split focus almost, because we've made it very clear from the very beginning, WCW was not a wrestling company. It is a wrestling company owned by a television company. So it is technically a wrestling show for a television company. So ratings matter more than pay-per-view, then Gates, then merch. Yes, it all matters. Yes, it's all important. But television is paramount.

But you and I have spent this entire time talking about syndication. Syndication is not necessarily a TBS product. It's not necessarily a T&T product. Yes, they're going to receive the revenue for it. Yes, they're a television company. I get that it's important. But can you tell us, was there ever a time where, there was a discussion about this split focus or did everybody just know hey as long as tbs is

priority you can do whatever you want on syndication just grow it and make us some money or was there a time when they said hey why was that on the syndicated show and not on tbs you're spending too much time on syndication we need to focus more on tbs can you talk me through that there's not much to talk about because there was no issue with it it never became an issue. I think keep in mind again, Turner executives other than Ted didn't really want to, they didn't want to deal with WCW. They didn't care. The best way to say it for the show, they did not care. They didn't care what we do. They would have preferred had we not been on TBS at all. That was their preference. And they certainly didn't care what we were doing

in syndication. So no, it never became an issue. Conrad, I'm not going to be rude here, but I'm going to send you a copy of a text. And I'm going to do it live on the air and I don't want you to read it. I just want to see your reaction to it because this is fucking uncanny. So bear with me, talk some shit up, sell an ad, do whatever we're going to do, but you got to see this because it's fucking crazy. Well, with that note, let me just mention you can work with Eric right now at save with Eric.com.

It's more than just a bug in the top right hand screen. Eric really is helping people save money. I don't know that you guys saw what CNBC put out earlier in the week, but if you take a look at credit card debt in America from the pandemic to now, we're talking about a hockey stick up. America is in more credit card debt than ever before. $1.21 trillion is the report as of last month. I'm sure it's even more now.

The question is, what's the solution? Moms and dads and families across America are really feeling the squeeze. There's more month at the end of the money. and what Eric can help you do is restructure your debt and get a cheaper, more affordable monthly payment. We're routinely helping families save a boatload of cash. Earlier this week, I talked to a guy who saved $1,700 a month. That's like a hell of a part-time income,

and he's saving that not once, but each and every month, all because he spent a few minutes with us and save with Eric.com. And how's this for starters? No house payments for two months. If your house payments are single biggest bill and you won't have to pay it in March or April, you're done until May 1st. And come May 1st, and you're going to be saving a boatload of cash. And I know some of you refinanced during the pandemic and you may say,

hey, I don't want to lose my great rate. I'm rate sensitive. Well, respectfully, I ask, how rate sensitive were you when you maxed out your credit card at 28%? We take a blended rate and we understand how much interest you're really paying on that death. And we take a look at what great rate you have right now. And we look at them combined. what are you effectively paying for your money? You see, I'm just an old country boy from Alabama,

and I believe what really matters is how much money's coming into the household every month and how much is going out. Is there a way to strategically adjust that? I want to give you an example, a real life example. Earlier this week, I talked to someone who did their loan four years ago, so they've got 26 years left, but they were really rate conscious, or so they told me.

They had six credit cards maxed out, ranging from 21% to 31%. They had no money left over at the end of the month. They were nervous. Could we even take the kids to go get ice cream? It's that razor thin. I get it. That's life, man.

But here's what we were able to do. We took their 26-year loan, because that's what they had left. We cut six years off their loan. We got them down to 20. But we knocked out all of their credit card debt. They're going to save 800 bucks a month. I want to repeat that. We're saving them $800 a month.

and we cut six years off of their loan. So that's six years of house payments, month in, month out. They don't have to pay all with cheaper monthly payments to the tune of over $10,000 a year. They did this. And by the way, if they applied that extra $800 to their mortgage, it paid off much faster than 20 years. Now, I want you to understand. We're talking about real dollars and cents.

What's coming in your household? What's going out your household each and every month? What's left over? If we can create some margin there and you pay less interest and you keep more of your own money, that's a win. And that's what we do every day at save witheric.com. You don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of your pocket.

So what are you waiting for? Go find out how much money you can save right now for free at save witheric.com. And by the way, I want you to go check my reviews. Go find out exactly what people are saying. You'll see that we've got, I don't know, 1,700 five-star reviews. our average rating is 4.74. Our most recent ratings says Larry and Francis both made me feel like they've known me my whole life. They took time to explain everything, never pushed me, and let me make all my own decisions, five stars. Shout out to James in Canton, Texas. Yes,

we're in your state too. Go read our reviews right now at Conradreviews.com and then go get yourself a quick quote at save witheric.com. NMLS number 2129, equal housing lender. Okay, Eric, you said you sent me a text. I got the phone here. All right. Don't give out any names and don't read the text, but just I'm anxious to see your reaction. And while you're reading through it, because it's a little bit of a text, I just want to say I want to thank everybody here on YouTube for being a part of 83 weeks. This is still some of the most fun that I have during the course of the week. I know sometimes I go on and on and on talking about certain aspects of the business that I'm very passionate about.

I get passionate about the business side of the wrestling business, much more so than I get excited about what goes on inside of the ring or the dirt sheet drama that surrounds it all. So for those of you that enjoyed this deep dive into the business of the wrestling business, specifically syndication and ad sales and growth, I appreciate you being here. For those of you who've tolerated it because you would much rather hear us talking about specific in reaction tune in next week we'll be back to it but i'd love to get into the biz of the biz if you know what i mean man i've had a lot of fun talking about selling wrestling on

television with you and i know that we can keep on and on with this but i'm sure we'll get in the weeds a little bit and i know that uh you've got a big weekend planned our next topic and this is going to be a fun one uh is coming right on time we're calling it ask eric anything and we're going to do it live right here on YouTube. We got some questions we didn't get to today, but we are going to get to all of those and many more next week here on the program. But make plans to

join us here at 83 weeks.com. I certainly appreciate Ryan A saying that I'm the Connie, the African Dream, the best pitch man in the USA. I don't know about that. Nonsense. McGee says, okay, not to hijack things, Eric, but hard to find concrete info.

Is it all about the source of funding and production gets that would dictate the ability to use margins in the line items asking for a friend. I mean, yeah, I mean, he who has the gold makes the rules, Eric, and the person who's providing the funding, they're going to go through those books with a fine-tooth comb, right? Now, yes. Then, then meaning when I was an independent television producer,

not so much. They have, you know, a cable outlet, for example, we'll use, uh, discovery. they had a set budget. They knew how much they were willing to spend for a particular project to fill their schedule. If we could come to them with a product within that budget that fulfilled their goals,

and the cost of the product was not unusual, or the line items weren't unusual in any way, they would look it over, they didn't question it, because they knew we had to make money. It's so much different. Of course, the source of the, he who writes a check writes the rules. That's always been the case.

The thing that's changed so dramatically are the rules. The rules that are written and the process. That's what's changed. It's always been the case, but it's much more oppressive today. My daughter is the vice president. My daughter is the vice president of development for an independent television production company. One of the bigger ones in Los Angeles today.

They own, for example, they bought up Bindabono productions and thousands and thousands of hours of all the stuff that Bindabona has produced over the last 20 or 30 years. So they're a successful company. They're a big company. But it's like working for a bank. It's not like working for a television. I don't mean that as a criticism. My daughter loves her job. She's grateful for the opportunity. But I talk to her regularly about the process that she has to go. She's the person that Jason and I would hope to pitch. That's who she is. And in her role, the things that she has to go

through to get a project greenlit are hard for me to imagine having to deal with. That's what's changed. we got a few more I want to hit real fast that Yeti master says hey Eric if you were to produce the show that you would love to create or be involved in today what would it be would you be more influenced by the profitability or the quality of the show would it be scripted reality comedy action drama is there one genre that gets your attention and is it the content of the show or the potential profitability of the show Eric wants both here's here's here's it's it's it's like the text I just sent you

which is just the irony of this conversation that we've had today and some specific examples I've given and then while we're alive on YouTube to get that text from a major major major player I name everyone listening to this would recognize everybody knows who this person is yes this This text just came in during the course of this discussion. And I would call it wrestling adjacent, right? And it's an opportunity. It's a big opportunity because of the people involved.

Now, can I get excited about that opportunity? Absolutely. Is it high, is it story? It's story. It's all of the above. Wrestling when it's done well or wrestling adjacent when it's done well, it's about characters, just like a drama, just like an action series or movie. It's about story, same as above. It's about action. It's about all of those things.

So if the opportunity, regardless of how profitable it could be, if it's interesting because it's an opportunity to create and focus on characters and story and action and all the things that makes professional wrestling work, the same way it makes gone with the wind work, stories, it's character. It's the journey. If it's an opportunity that allows me to try to create those elements and focus on them, I'm excited about it regardless of how profitable it is. Conversely, if I'm provided an opportunity to get involved with a project and it's extremely profitable, but it's not that interesting because I don't have the ability to create the characters and the stories and the action and the drama,

I know it sounds weird because I'm certainly not wealthy, but the money isn't that important to me, which is hard for me to even say, it's like, who the fuck have I become? But I just say the money isn't important to me, but it's true. I've learned the hard way

that if I don't feel passionate about something, it's only going to get about 20% enemy. It ain't going to work. Which means it's not going to be successful. That's right. And on the flip side, if I'm passionate about it, I don't really give two shits about the money because it'll end up being there anyway eventually. That's just how I approach things. Jennifer Lewis is with us and she says, this is a fascinating episode. I'll catch this on the replay because there's some great information here that can translate for other industries and I want to give it my undivided attention. Shout out to you, Jennifer. I appreciate

you saying that. TTC says Eric, if you could or Eric could an animated wrestling promotion, be successful. It would be great to bring back legends like Hall and Piper with good writers and voice actors. You know, there is some crossover

with comic books and anime and all that stuff with wrestling. Do you think an animated wrestling series that leverages legends and their voices? Like, I understand what he's saying about Piper and Hall and I that but respectfully we still got jake roberts we still got haxaw jim dougan we still got the million

dollar man could a wrestling cartoon work do you think sure sure again if it was who's your target audience if it's kind of a adult themed animated project i i think you could work you know with with with ai we can recreate voices and characters from people who are no longer with us to interact with people who are with us in an animated series. Hell yeah, it could work. Anything can work if you've got an imagination and a basic understanding of human needs. Human needs is a big broad umbrella, but entertainment is a human need. Distraction is a human need.

So the challenge is, how do I make this animated project interesting, compelling, and satisfy a small portion of human needs in the form of an animated project? I know that sounds a little crazy, like I've been chewing on acid all morning, but it really comes down to that. Can I satisfy the audience with this product? And there's a million, you're only limited by your own imagination or lack thereof. Eric, what's interesting is there's still so much of an appetite for this right now. I mean, we just saw that there's now an evolve show coming to 2B,

and it'll be on YouTube internationally. And we know that, you know, uh, Philly Corgan found a home for his reality show. And you and I know that there is some whispers about something maybe wrestling adjacent that you and I both love the idea of that's brewing in Florida. We won't say anything else. but when you first told me the idea, it clicked, and I was like, oh, that could be real big. And you and I have a call internationally Monday afternoon about something that maybe is more wrestling than wrestling adjacent.

There is an appetite out there right now, Eric, a year from now, do you think the landscape looks any differently when it comes to wrestling or wrestling adjacent and TV? Yes. Particularly with wrestling adjacent, you know, derivatives of wrestling, because here's my take. I think any network out there, when I say network, cable network, major network, whatever, streaming platform, anybody that has the budget and the interest in professional wrestling, already have it.

You got Turner Broadcasting over here. You've got Netflix. You've got NBC. They've got all the, they've got. wrestling if you're a smaller cable outlet you can't afford or even a wrestling show that realistically could compete on the same level even as AEW forget about WWE that's another world that's a that's another universe that's like saying yeah I think I wanted to start a wrestling company I want to be the first one

on Mars so I'm gonna do that forget about competing with WWE it's never ever ever ever ever ever going to happen with anybody on the other hand, because there's so much success, because of what WWE has done has created so much success, because they've broken down the stigma barriers that we started talking about with this show, WWE has done that. WCW helped a little bit back in the 1990s, but WWE changed that world dramatically. And because they've grown the audience, because they are now a worldwide brand, because is they're a multi-billion dollar entity.

Guess what? There's a lot of other companies out there that are saying to themselves, I know this for a fact. You just read the text. Hey, we aren't going to do that, but we could do this. And we can do it affordably. And it's good, compatible programming for the audience that already loves wrestling.

Those opportunities, I think, are going to continue to expand. The opportunities for another version of, AEW, I think are virtually non-existent over the next two, three, four years because everybody that wants it and can afford it already has it. We're going to be discussing all of this and more. Of course, Eric and I are going to be tuned into Smackdown the night. We can't wait to see what the Rock is going to do. And I'm sure we're going to be discussing it next week.

And if it's crazy, you never know when we're going to be live. So do it right now. Hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications. spell and next week we'll be live asking all of your questions it's ask eric anything take to social media find us on social media and use that hashtag ask eric anything the show is easy to find it's at 83 weeks on twitter on facebook and on instagram but be sure to use the hashtag ask eric anything eric thanks so much for the time today can't wait to do it next week and i hope you have safe travels this weekend man all right but yeah i'm heading to portland going to me make you

an appearance in Portland tomorrow, and I'll be home Sunday. So it'll be a quick turnaround, but I'm looking forward to seeing all of friends and fans in Portland. And, Conrad, I'm going to call you right quick to get your take on that text. Sounds good. We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Fishaw. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts every single week starting at just nine bucks that's less than 20 cents an episode each month and yes you can listen to them all directly through apple podcasts or your regular podcast

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