83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #14: The CONSTRUCTION of a Wrestling TV Show

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

On this SPECIAL LIVE edition of Strictly Business. Eric & Jon deconstruct RAW and Dynamite just to put it back together again for YOUR INSIGHT. Special thanks to this week's sponsors! Stamps.com- Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/BISCHOFF. Jimmy's Seafood-Free 2-day nationwide shipping on orders over $125 (excluding steamed crabs and fresh items) use the promo code: WRESTLEBIZ FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9 over on AdFreeShows.com. That's less than 15 cents an episode each month! You can also listen to them directly through Apple Podcasts or your other regular podcast apps! AdFreeShows.com also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content including popular series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back, Conversations with Conrad, Mike Chioda's Mailbag and many more! Plus, live, interactive virtual chats with your favorite podcasts hosts and wrestling legends. All that and much more! Sign up today at AdFreeShows.com! If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on Strictly Business. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super-targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with Strictly Business. Get all of your Strictly Business merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks 0:09 START 2:30 Tom D Episode 3:00 Today's Topic: The CONSTRUCTION of a Wrestling TV Show 3:45 WHAT are the building blocks of a great wrestling TV Show? 6:20 HOW do you STAGGER a Wrestling show? 9:00 HOW do you keep an audience now vs the 90s? 11:30 can the A-Story be "Too Much?" 14:30 the pacing of RAW 02/13 16:15 the VALUE of a recap on TV 18:40 the 02/03 Smackdown segment by segment 22:17 02/08 Dynamite Segment by Segment 27:00 LAST NIGHT'S AEW Dynamite 29:30 Can you imagine Succession being structured like this? 32:00 The failure of the 3 man announce booth 36:05 DEFENSE of Excaliber on commentary 39:16 BREAK Jimmys Seafood 42:50 The Narrative urgency on WWE's programming 48:00 The CROSSOVER 51:46 GROWTH 52:16 LAST NGIHT'S Dynamite starting with a tag team match 55:30 MJF vs Bryan Danielson 57:38 BREAK STAMPS.com 1:01:05 Closing Dynamite with the Women 1:04:00 Does AEW NOT need to grow? 1:06:16 Wardlow dropped the ball 1:14:45 Does AEW need to grow? Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/4975053643186176 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's going on, my friends? It is time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff. I, of course, am John Alba. And my friend, Mr. Bischoff, we are reunited. It's been a few weeks since you and I have been able to sit across from one another and put on some audible chocolate for all of our listeners and viewers. But I'm very grateful to be spending some time with you today. How are you?

It looks like you're on location. I am on location on my son's deck in Florida. And just getting on a little bit. bit of family time getting to enjoy the grandson and just hanging out nothing better than that i hear the allergies are a little rough out there yeah spent about the last four or five days every day i was out on a motorcycle just riding around enjoying the weather and forgot about all the allergies that exist year round here in florida so uh i was not so gently reminded yesterday when i woke up in my head was the size of two basketballs look like it my head looks like it my head looks

It feels like it should be on Andre the Giants' body. That's how big it feels. Well, I'm glad that you're feeling up to doing this show. Like I said, love strictly business with you, Eric Bischoff. 83 weeks.com is where you can subscribe. But if you want early access and first access, ad-free shows.com is the place to be. You want to sign up right now. You'll get early access to pretty much all the Conrad Thompson Cinematic Universe podcast plus live recordings.

And we are live with our top guys, top gals, everyone in between. between today and on the 83 weeks YouTube as a treat as well. And we've got a special episode, Eric Pischoff. Before we get to that, though, I do want to put a quick bow tie on your episode from two weeks ago with Tom DeShane's last week. We had a best of the business. But with Tom DeShane, I thought Tom is just one of the smartest minds out there when it comes to assessing storytelling.

And I wasn't even on that episode, but I listened and just loved listening to the two of you go back and forth. Is there anything else you'd like to add on Tom's assessment of the bloodline story? No, I think Tom pretty much covered it. There's that much I could possibly add. He's so good. He not only understands traditional storytelling and literature and the works of Shakespeare and Aristotle and so many other

of the great writers and thinkers of the past, but he's also a massive wrestling fan, as if you couldn't tell by listening to him. You know, he can go back and recall stories and characters and their evolutions and in more detail than I think any of the people that ever even created it knew. So it's fascinating to listen to Tom. Go back and listen or watch if you haven't already. It's on the 83 weeks podcast feed 83 weeks.com and on YouTube as well.

Awesome episode. I'm sure that won't be the last time we have Tom on to discuss some stuff. But the bloodline story is very relevant to our episode today because we are talking about the construct of a professional wrestling show and how you go about segmenting a show and putting it together from a production standpoint. How do you fit in different quarter hours? How do you stagger your show?

And Eric Bischoff has a lot of experience in that. And as part of our little social experiment, we had Eric watch Raw this week and watch Dynamite this week and we'll kind of take a look at how those things stacked up in addition to some of the past week's episodes we have quarterly ratings for.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty of these particular episodes, Eric. In a theoretical perfect world, what are the core elements of what should make up a professional wrestling program, be it a two-hour program or a three-hour program? Okay, let's start with the obvious. Obviously, it would be great action or action. Hopefully it's great action. It doesn't always have to be great. Sometimes it can be just mildly entertaining.

Sometimes action in the ring can be used as a transition, meaning you want to get your, your crowd up and at a peak at something very dramatic and compelling going on inside of the ring and you may want to just let them down a little bit with a match that maybe isn't quite as compelling or the stakes aren't quite as high some people can cynically refer to that as a filler type match I think of it more as a transition because I think when you produce a television show and this is what makes you know wrestling so tricky when it comes to other forms of entertainment is that you're entertaining the crowd at home. You need to hold that television audience because television is the core.

It is the lifeblood of any wrestling promotion, at least currently. But you've also got your live audience, which in a way, and I've talked about this many times in the past, in a way your crowd is as much of a character in that show as the people in the ring so you're you need to manage both the live audience as well as your television audience in order to maximize the emotion the compelling nature hopefully of what it is you're producing. So you've got action in the ring. You've got talent narrative that can take place either inside of the ring with a microphone

or backstage or something that was pre-taped, either earlier in a day or earlier in the week, a sit-down type interview, something where you get to know the talent on a little bit more of an intimate basis. And then, of course, you've got your traditional color and play by play. All of those in combination create a narrative that hopefully supports your story going forward and the action in the ring. So all those elements come together and you're hoping that it creates something that entices the viewer to tune in next week in an ideal world here.

but there's also got to be this recognition that some segments are going to draw eyes and other segments are going to lose eyes. So from your experience, how are you staggering a show in which you're recognizing you will lose some but then you're going to try to get them back at the same time? I don't think I ever set down to help format a show.

I didn't format them by myself, but I don't think I've ever sat down in review to format to give notes on it or help create a, format where I anticipated losing an audience during the course of a match. So at the very, let me, let me finish. Please, go ahead. At the very least, I always hoped to maintain the audience I had. And that, too, is a function of the format.

So for, let me explain that a little bit. I've got a head full of Sudafed, so bear with me. But. one of the things that I think is really necessary to maintain your audience throughout the two hour or three hour broadcast is knowing that while you may have some segments your a story for example the most important story you have your main event okay you want that to draw as big of a rating as possible but it is at the end of a two hour show or in the case of raw It's at the end of a three-hour show. So what do you do to hold that audience and build upon it to the end? You have to be sure to, using narrative, one way, shape, or form, as we just discussed, keep that story alive.

Keep that story in the front of the viewer's mind. Make them feel that it's so important. They cannot casually look around. on their remote and see what else is on or go get up and do something else. You have to hold them and you do that by creating compelling content. You can also do that by really promoting heavily what's coming up next. So you may have a match. Two younger talents that don't necessarily have a big story behind them or a story that you've

been focused on for weeks, for example. It can be a random matchup. But during that random matchup, if you want to hold the audience that you started with, make sure, in addition to the narrative that that match needs your color and play-by-play and keeping that as interesting as possible. And boy, do I have a lot to say about that after watching five hours of wrestling. You also need to keep reminding viewers that coming up next, this is going to happen. Coming up a little later, this is going to happen.

You know, you have to hold that audience. And I think going into any segment with the idea that, okay, we're going to lose some audience here. I think it's self-defeating. You're starting out in a hole and you're digging deeper as you go. And that's what I wanted to correct what I was insinuating there was you're not going in by being like defeated. So like, oh, we're going to lose, but I'm also trying to take a very realistic approach that you're just not going to simply be able to keep an audience. No show is ever able to keep an audience consistent. and rise, rise, rise, rise the entire time.

I beg to differ. I beg to differ. And what I'd like to do is on next week's episode. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to do it, and I wish I would have. I've got a C-130 flying over. I don't know if you can hear that or not. Is I like to go back and look at, you know, Nitro when it was a two-hour format. Okay.

Back in 96 and 97. Let's look at those quarter hours, because they're out there somewhere. Somebody's got them. just got to look a little bit, but this may be my memory working me, as opposed to my memory working, but we always strive to end up the night hotter than we started, and we were pretty consistent in doing so. So, and I think even on some of the most recent smackdowns, we've seen that they've actually held the audience for two entire hours. Now, you may have a dip here. here or there, you're going to have some audience attrition naturally over the course of time

because not everybody can sit down and watch to, or in some cases, three hours of wrestling. I'm a perfect example. I can't sit that long and watch anything. I'm going to get up and I'm going to go do something. I'm going to be checking my phone. I'm going to be checking my laptop for messages. You know, I'm doing something around the house for my wife, whatever, over a three-hour window, especially. But the question is, do I come back? can sit back down and watch it and continue to watch it because I'm looking forward to something that's happening next or later or in the main event. I guess that's exactly the point that I was making that.

We are kind of in this modern era now where you have your phone at your disposal. You can multitask and do different things, whereas maybe in the mid to late 90s, it was not quite as layered in that sense where there weren't as many things going on to take away your distraction. And that's just also the nature of how technology has changed and maybe even a spans too. We got some great interaction though, Eric, before we take a deep dive into all the stuff you're talking about from YouTube and from our ad-free show subscribers as well. This is a good one from Yeti Master. How often is it that the A story oversaturates the show? There are cases

where the announces talk A story throughout matches and short segments peppered in. So can it be a little too much sometimes where you're hammering home that story maybe to the point where it's a little off-putting for the customer? Yeah. And yeah, I mean, too much of a good thing isn't a good thing. You know what I mean? You have to have balance and you want to make as much as you can. Even in the case of a transition match where you're intentionally letting that crowd, that live crowd, take a little breather because they have to. That's part of, as I was talking about earlier, when you have two, you have two masters to serve, right? You have the live audience is a master and your television audience is a master. And you have to manage them both. And part of managing your live audience is to not try to keep them up. You know, if everybody's standing on their feet and chairing or throwing garbage or whatever, is it 10?

You can't keep an audience at that level for two hours, right? You have to let it ebb and flow. It has to, you got to let them come down so that you can get them back up again. They have, it's energy, man. and you're not going to stand there and be just jammed up excited over two hours of anything. But if you can manage that audience and keep ebbing and flowing, but doing so in a way that builds that audience over a two-hour window or a three-hour window, you've won.

You've got a winner of a show. Hey, guys, it's the hardcore legend Mick Foley here, and I need to call a quick timeout. A brief timeout, because I wanted to tell your listeners what I have been telling Foley is pod listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening over on ad-free shows.com. Ad-free shows gives you early ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, including the snake pick with Jake and the devil himself Kevin Sullivan to the program. I'm ready to go out and I see Ming coming back.

And all of a sudden, they threw a cinder block and hit him on the shoulder from the roof. He dropped to a knee, but he just shook it off and came in. If they had hit him in the head, it would kill them. David Crockett joins Conrad for an all-new edition of The Book, as they go day by day through February, 1985, with the help of Jim Crockett's original booking law. Solmania 1 is right around the corner, and Jim Crockett Promot is running in Vince's own backyard. In that area, knew him, knew his reputation. It's a working class audience.

They like the style of our wrestling, and you put Dusty and Backland together. They're opposites, but they attract, and they make it work. This month marks the 35-year anniversary of one of the famous twin referee angle on the main event. And ad-free shows members got to watch. you back live alongside Earl Hebner on our latest premium watch-along event. I got to dress, I got to use Andre's dressing room after all this happened. And Andre just loved me.

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So, whether you're just a good. you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people. Get ready to meet first-rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Zip. Finally, that ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. I think having a good A story where people are so genuinely invested in seeing the outcome week to week and really help carry a pro wrestling show and set the standard. It doesn't always have to be, and we'll talk about it more as we kind of drill into this, But in watching Monday Night Raw this past week, you know, there's a couple things I think

they could do so much better in both in, in WW and AEW. But that being said, you know, Raw opened up with the A story, right? It opened up in a ring with Becky Lynch, cutting a promo. And then the drama started to ensue. You know, Act 1 was Becky Lynch. Act two was everybody else getting involved. And the third act was when, God, I'm really, really fading on you guys.

Becky Lynch versus Bailey versus Bianca Bel Air. Right, but they raised the stakes. They raised the stakes for elimination. Pierce raised the stakes. So that opening segment, in ring narrative segment, Okay, typically they don't always work the best. People like traditionally to open up with hot action.

But in this case, they not only before we even heard from Becky Lynch, we saw the backstory. It reminded the audience of where we've been, where Becky's been, and why she's here and what does she have to say. So there was continuity. There was a thread between the video of what happened previously and then segue right. to Becky Lynch it was it was done I won't say flawlessly but it was done really really well in terms of checking the box in other words and here's here's my question I can't think of one successful episodic drama that does not open up with a recap of where we are in a story and it's not just to remind the people that

didn't see that's the kind of juvenile response you get from people that don't really know anything about television it's not to remind people it's to tell people what's important telling the audience what you want them to focus on, telling the audience why they should stick around for three hours in the case of Monday Night Raw. You're telling the audience what to pay attention to. And by doing so, you're setting yourself up to build to your main event exactly the way that Monday Night Raw did

in exactly the way AEW didn't this past Wednesday night. That's a great tool to use to get the audience to invest their time and get them to stick around and watch the main event. To me, it's critical, but I think both AEW and WW would be far better served to look at some of the really successful shows that are out there. scripted shows dramas but they're episodic and wrestling you think some people you know i heard somebody say no i still think of wrestling as a sport well good for you whatever um you're whatever i don't i can't imagine why people think that you know sport is a legitimate head-to-head competition wrestling is a scripted drama and it's episodic and i think the failure on wwe's part and and AEW's part, especially AEW, because for a variety of reasons, but to not take

advantage of 30 or 45 or maybe even a minute, and I don't think it would take a minute, just to highlight the pivotal moments in your A story, your B story, and your C story, whatever they may be, it doesn't have to be much. again it's not reminding the audience so much it's telling the audience what you want them to pay attention to now you're in control of the audience and their remote control isn't at least not as much well there's a great example of that and we actually have a chart courtesy of

Brandon Thurston's wrestlenomics which you can go check out he does a great job charting the quarterlies and breaking it down segment by segment we have the February 3rd Smackdown. And I want to bring that up. I know it's not an episode of Smackdown that you're able to see in full, but it points to exactly what you just mentioned.

This was the post-Royal Rumble Smackdown. So keep in mind, we're coming off Sammy Zane having his big turn on Roman Raines here. And the show starts with a recap of the events that we saw at the Royal Rumble with Sammy Zane, Array's story. And that followed by a backstage angle where Roman Raines said that, Jay Uso wasn't there, but they'd be checking in throughout the night to see if he would show up.

And then he said at the end of the night, I'm going to talk to the crowd. I'm going to speak my piece. So look right there at that breakdown. You start at 23, eight, five. It's starting the show off. Midway through the show, we revisit that. We're coming off of Cody Rhodes winning the Rumble. We know that that's going to be tied into the bloodline.

So again, keeping with that A story, just maybe a little bit of a different angle on that A story, because we know Roman Raines and Cody Rhodes are going to be involved with one another. You peek back up again for that. And then at the end of the show, we bookend it perfectly where we're revisiting that A story. We're putting the biggest star in the show on last.

And as we know, we got the payoff where Sammy Zane ended up taking out Roman Raines at the end of that. And what's remarkable, Eric, is keep in mind, this is a Friday night at 10 o'clock p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And we see a significant rise there in viewership. Yeah, let's go back to that graphic. if we could, Steve, something I noticed there.

Now, I didn't see the show, but I'm looking at this chart. If you look from 8.4, okay, so you've got Roman Raines. We've got your A story kicking off the show, which, again, kind of goes to my point of the right way to do things, because you're telling the audience that's something big is coming up at the end, and you're asking them to stick around. Okay, but you've also got 845 to 9. You've got Charlotte in there. Cody Rhodes in there, Cody Rhodes interview, and then from 9 to 915, which is the crossover.

That's a vulnerable time because certain things come on at the head of the hour. And you can, if you haven't built a good format, you can lose audience over that crossover. And hopefully they come back. But oftentimes people just, oh, let's see what's going on here. Let's explore a little bit on the remote. but if you can do a great job of holding that audience as they did here with some of the biggest names on the roster right now Charlotte Flair Sonia Cody Rhodes bloodline I mean they did a great job of holding that audience during that critical crossover and if you look you know they opened up with two what is it two million three hundred and eighty five yep okay and in the crossover at 845 to nine they had 2,413,000, and 2,385.

So for all intents and purposes, they held that audience. And they did it by not only putting the hottest names on the roster, arguably, some of them, at least. But they also gave you an act two. They reminded you. The bloodline story is now you, act one was the opening segment. Act 2 was this 9 to 915 crossover period, and then you have the final act in your main event. Again, perfect formatting.

For the sake of this discussion, perfect formatting. Sure. And I want to bring up the dynamite from last week real quick here, too, the February 8th dynamite before we dive into what we saw this week on TV, because I thought there was an opportunity for them to do something very similar. to that Smackdown format that we just saw, but they went a very different route. And I think as a result, you saw the consequences. If Steve, do we have that chart there?

Perfect. Okay. So the hottest angle, I would argue, in AEW right now is the MJF and Brian Danielson's story. It's your main event story. They're leading to a big 60-minute Ironman match at the pay-per-view. People love Brian Danielson. Okay. So they start the show off with MJF. And MJF, as you know, Eric, is one of the biggest draws that AW has. So he's, starts off the show, then I thought the perfect way to structure this was if Brian Danielson versus Roche, which the stipulation was, if Brian Danielson won that match, he would get MJF at the pay-per-view. So there are stakes involved with the match. I thought if you maybe made that your main event and use the middle of the show as a reminder for what is to come and the stakes

of that Brian Danielson-Rush match and why you should care about it, I don't think you would see the trend that we saw here. Because if you're taking a look at these numbers, the viewership goes up to see Brian Daniels. People love them. It's part of the A's story. But then there's no incentive for them to stick around even for the acclaimed versus the guns tag team championship match. Just because I don't think the guns are at that point right now where everyone's really putting all that much focus on them. And we saw a significant drop as a result. I thought with a little bit of tweaking, maybe similar to what you had just spoken about with that Smackdown show from the week prior they could have had a little more success with this what's your take just looking at that chart

there well it's hard to say looking at this chart because i didn't watch the show so you got to kind of do both for me at least to have an opinion but i think the bigger issue with AEW is it definitely is formatting but it's lack of story structure there just i mean based on what i saw this morning because i watched it i devr it um it's just random. There's no continuity throughout the entire show. So, I mean, yeah, they started out with MJF against the guy who he doesn't have a storyline with, at least not that I know of, and in a relatively unknown character. So yeah, you've got MJF in the opening segment, but what does it matter as it relates to Brian Danielson? It doesn't. It just doesn't. It's just MJF. Just because

you put someone on in the first segment doesn't necessarily mean it's a build towards anything. In this case, it wasn't. Now, again, I didn't see it. So maybe there was something more there. I'm just looking at names on a graph. Sure. Canosuke

Takesha had been involved with Brian Danielson a week prior, and he got the endorsement from Brian Danielson and MJF. See, this is where I get this is where I start to get hot sometimes. You know, when when a certain segment of the audience, the smallest segment of the audience, you know,

fires back when I start being critical of lack of story or structure in AEW. What the AEW audience accepts as a story is not what I would accept as a story. Okay. It's not what Tom DeShane's would expect in the story. There is no structure, structure. There is no progressive evolution of the, characters or the story. It's simply angles or versions of angles or or a weak narrative that doesn't really mean anything. It's just I don't know man. It's so it's hard for me to have

these discussions without sounding like I'm picking on a EW but I tried really hard this morning to look for something positive so that I could speak to something positive and I I'm sorry I just didn't see it. I saw a mismatch. I saw really bad wrestling. You know, I, I, I haven't sat down and watched a full episode of AEW in a long time, but I kept hearing, oh, but the wrestling's better. I got news for you. I watched three hours of Monday Night Raw that flew by, and I watched two hours of AEW that I had to force myself to watch. And if I wouldn't have been doing this, this show with you today, I wouldn't have watched it. It was painful to watch. I thought the wrestling was marginal in many cases, marginal. And that's being kind.

some of it was really just downright bad and I know that there's a lot of good you know I love watching Claudio you know he's such an amazing performer and athlete but he's in a match that it was okay it wasn't eh

I mean if you're into hardcore and blood you got your nut but in terms of athleticism and storytelling and psychology, it's just a match. And that's the problem when you're just booking matches

without a compelling story, without an evolution of a character, without getting to know or feel for those characters, all you're doing is watching guys beat the shit out of each other, that's not a story. And having two guys, you know, standing out on, you know, and the, the guns

what's her the gun show the two young kids you're talking about Billy Gunn's sons yeah well having them come out and kind of standing on the stage

while the match is going on I guess if that's your idea of a storyline then have at it it's just not compelling it doesn't work I will say this just as a devil's advocate I had felt the last few weeks of

AW in-ring stuff was like among the best that dynamite has done in a long time. But that does not necessarily equate to having that point A to point B show structure as well. You can have great patterns. There was no

continuity. There was no fluidity. It's just like they were just random matches. That is my biggest complaint with AWTV is that it does feel somewhat everything kind of happens in a vacuum. if you will.

Everything happens in its own vacuum on the show. And there can be some really interesting stuff that happens in each vacuum. But to your point, I do think it does sometimes struggle to feel a little cohesive from that start to that finish, especially with that one graph that I just mentioned. Can you imagine sitting in, what's your favorite drama series, John? Favorite drama series? Man. You know what I love? I love the man.

I think the Mandalorian is one of the best rend shows in all TV. All right. I'm not familiar with that one. I'm a Star Wars nerd. It's cool. Just, I mean, can you imagine? Raking that? Now, I'm going to go back to, you know, the one I'm watching now, Succession.

Okay. That's a fairly complex story. There's a lot of characters. Their interpersonal relationships are very nuanced. There's an A, a B, a C, a D story going on all the time. And you really have to pay attention to that show to really appreciate it. But it flows. I can't imagine watching that show if I'm watching one hour of just random scenes.

Same characters. By the way, great characters, great actors and actresses. Perfect. Great director. But if you're just showing me random scenes and there's no real continuity to that one hour, I'm sorry, I'm out. I'm gone. And that's the best way I can describe it.

Just the lack of continuity, in my opinion, really poor narrative. You know, Tony Chavani is a good friend of mine. I, nothing but respect for him and a lot of affection. But man, that three-man broadcast team on Dynamite does absolutely nothing for the show. That narrative is just a waste of time. it's it's it in of itself is random and detached from what's going on it and that you know announcers are such an important part of it because you know wrestling is a physical you know when you go to a when you go to a when you go to broadway you watch a play live right the

that's all narrative it's physical in a sense that you can see the actors in the actresses and the staging and there's drama there and there's body language. But for the most part, you know, stage work is a spoken word, right? It's the narrative comes in the form of dialogue. Television, whether it's a sitcom or drama, it's a spoken word is your narrative. Well, in wrestling, much of the spoken word isn't spoken. It's it's it's physical. and that's why there has to be psychology that's why there has to be an ebb in the flow that's why

there has to be a three-act structure so the emotions build over the course of a match until you get to the finish and your announcers have to do the same thing your announcers have to support that narrative but when you've got three people and not one of them is calling play by play and they all have, you know, a color commentary perspective. And none of it is really advancing story the way it should. It's interesting to me that approach because I know, you know, Jim Ross certainly believed in what I just said. Tony Chavani was great at it, but I'm watching AEW.

And to a degree, I was less than impressed with WWE's color and play by play. I just think we've gotten away from using the narrative that your color commentator or your play-by-play can provide. We've gotten so far removed from making that a significant part of the storytelling aspect of a show that to me it's just background noise. It's just there. Provides very, you know, Taz in watching AEW this morning, Taz did say, you know, in my day, or I've been in situations like this,

or perhaps this is what this, whoever is performing in the ring is thinking. And that's what Taz should be doing. But somebody should be calling play by play. Somebody should be threading this all together and talking about why it's even important. Why is what we're watching important? That's the one thing. You know, I started out. I was going to make notes.

And in the case of watching Monday Night Raw, I don't want to sound this like a blown smoke, but I got into the show so much that I just quit making notes. Because making notes requires me to take myself out of the show, right? I didn't want to do that. I wanted to feel the flow of it. And there was nothing really to make a lot of notes on other than, man, I think color and play-by-play could be so much more improved.

And maybe that's just me. You know, maybe it's because of the way I came up. Maybe it's because of the type of wrestling that I watch. But I've said this before, man. I live in a little town in Wyoming. Cody, Wyoming, there's less than 10,000 people in that town. I've never been to a girls basketball game. I'll likely probably go to a girls basketball game,

high school basketball game, because I love listening to local radio. And there's a local guy there, sports guy, that covers girls basketball. And if I'm out riding around on my truck, I turn that on and I get excited about what I'm listening to because the play by play, the guy that's calling play by play brings me into that basketball game, even though I don't have anybody, I don't know anybody on the team. I don't have any friends who have kids on the team. I am not necessarily a basketball fan, but he brings that basketball game to life vis-à-vis his ability as a narrator, play-by-play guy. But he's really telling stories. And that, to me, is what's severely lacking in both products today.

And I do want to say one thing as a disclaimer, because I know I'm going to come off is beating up pretty badly on AEW in this because they deserve it. but also it's a little unfair to compare a go home show for a pay-per-view to a show that is three or four weeks out from their next pay-per-view right so it it is a little bit unfair in that respect but i think in terms of basic formatting it really doesn't matter i want to retort real quick just on the play-by-play front just kind of trying to put myself in my see if I can lean into my background a little bit in calling pro sports and whatnot.

I do believe the role of a play-by-play guy is to serve as the point guard to facilitate the tempo of the show flow or the game flow, whatever it may be, and how the audience consumes it, and they are to serve up their color commentator where the color commentator then adds their personal background or their experience into it

to help further the action that we just saw from the screen. I think Excalibur on A.W. is a very good play-by-play guy in the sense of calling action. He reminds me almost of a hockey play-by-play guy where it's just bang, bang, bang, he knows the moves.

He's very good in that sense. What I do think, if I could be critical... Boy, I sure didn't hear much of it. Well, what I do think I could be critical is I almost think it's so rapid fire that it gives this unintentional tempo boost to the show where it's almost moving too fast. And I feel like if I as a consumer had a little more time to just take in and breathe in

that action a little more. That would allow for those stories to be told a little more effectively. Just my take, again, on that front. And it is a hard job. I want to say that outright, whether it's WWA, WMLB, NBA, calling actions are really hard thing to do. It's not that hard. It's not that hard.

it's it's how you do it Tony Shawnee knows how to do it Jim Ross knows how to do it they're just not and in the show that I watched with Excalibur I didn't hear that I heard three guys doing color commentary that's what I heard and here's the difference between sports and your experience and professional wrestling and again I'm going to go back professional wrestling is not a sport it is a drama it is a scripted drama and as such and because it's it it most of the narrative between the combatants or between the principles takes place in the ring in a physical form it is absolutely imperative that your color and play by play team serve as a as narrators sure and help advance the story simply calling

the action is not what I'm talking about it's you've got to be telling a story all the way through that two or three hour episode and i you know i was disappointed in the color commentary for raw i mean when i say disappointed you know i'd give it a six on a seven maybe on a scale of one to ten but it could be so much better and so much more effective in w we used to do it that used to be great at it um i don't know what happened and maybe it's just maybe somebody's research said it doesn't matter anymore i don't know maybe there's a reason for it. But I think so much is being left on the table that it's confusing to me, actually. Well, one thing I do know, Eric, is that regardless of whether you're enjoying play-by-play

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When you're eating good, that helps a wrestling show move along. a little quicker, doesn't it? It makes it far more enjoyable. And a beverage to go along with it, and then you just get a home run. Of course, of course. Again, we're talking these crab cakes that are the best of the very best.

And when you get endorsements from the likes of Bobby Flay or Guy Fieri, you know that you're going to be eating well. And you can customize your experience as well. Like the famous gift box, which includes four of the world's best. colossal Maryland crab cakes, two different crab soups, crab dip, seafood seasoning, and their signature base sauce, or maybe if you were watching the Super Bowl, you decided to go with the tailgate bundle with two pounds of wings, a full rack of barbecue ribs, a pint of

crab dip, and some crab cake mix. I am starving just thinking about this stuff right here, Eric Bischoff. Did you have any good Super Bowl eats this past weekend? No, we didn't really do much for Super Bowl, you know, with a year and a half, year old running around or you're not yeah he's a year and a half now running around commanding everybody's attention we didn't get a lot of time to do a lot of prep so we didn't we didn't cook much this week but i'm going to tell you one thing my experience with jimmy so i ordered the uh the crab cakes this was a couple years ago now when i first heard

about jimmy's had him show up to the house and they're you know they're like patty's about i don't know about that big around and maybe inch or so thick maybe maybe a little more. And I looked at those and I go, okay, well, I can eat two or three of those. So I cooked a bunch of them, right? We had friends over. I got through my first one and I'm thinking, there's no way. Because unlike crab cakes I've had in the past, where there's a lot of filler in there, and it can be all kinds of stuff that tastes kind of good, but it ain't crab. It ain't crab, right? Those are not as filling. But what I had jimmies, there's no filler in these puppies there there are chunks of crab the size of my thumb in these crab cakes and they're so

filling and so rich that uh you just got to try it man i i thought and i've eaten crab cakes in some of the best restaurants in the united states and there is nothing that comes close to jimmis nothing and you don't even have to go to baltimore to get your taste of it jimmy's famous seafood dot com ships free two day nationwide all you got to do promo code wrestle biz on most orders over $125 tell them eric bischoff sent you because we hear it strictly business love jimmy's famous seafood and we thank them for sponsoring this podcast okay let's dive more in on these particular episodes of wbb raw in a w dynamite um steve can we producer steve by the ways who are shown out who does a great job every single week here

Can we pull up the raw graphic one more time? Because there is a difference, I would imagine, at least. Maybe I'm overstepping here. But there's got to be some sort of a difference in stacking a three-hour show versus a two-hour show. And what I found to be so fascinating when looking at this graph was the gigantic increase that we saw in the Cody Rhodes and Sammy Zane segment here. And, you know, tiled off a bit. But what's your assessment when you watch this show? how did you feel about the flow of it?

I think almost everything tied together really well. There was a real cohesiveness to the show. It flowed. Everything felt connected even if it wasn't. And that's just that's the flow of the show, the energy of the show, the ebbs and valleys, if you will. But even looking at the graphic, you know, three-hour show, what do they lose?

200,000 viewers from the opening segment. I mean, that's kind of amazing on a three-hour show. Not even that. A little over 150,000, 160,000 viewers from the show open to the show close on a three-hour show. That, to me, is outstanding. And another thing, going back to the Cody Sammy promo, the other thing I noticed about the show, which was really obvious to me in the Cody and Sammy promo is, every segment, almost every segment, not quite every segment, almost every segment that I watched

had some kind of element of anticipation built into it, meaning you weren't just watching a match, you weren't just watching a promo. In the back of your mind, you're thinking, ooh, something could happen here. That's a spontaneity that makes live TV work. Here's an example. perfect example and again with a head full of pseudofid I'm going to probably screw this up but the young lady who's the announcer

opens up with Corbin and in before Corbin can barely get a word out she gets word wait a minute we've got something going on up in the ring you remember seeing that and then

now that what did that create to for me and it created well anticipation or there's a sense of urgency something's happening that's so important we've got to do what we normally don't do because we normally don't do this type of thing we normally don't open up to do a backstage segment with someone and then shut it down 15 seconds in so we can jump up into the rank because something more important is happening that's very unusual but what does that tell the viewer ooh this is important you You better not leave. Oh, by the way, it was a crossover, too, wasn't it?

That feeling of anticipation and urgency is what I saw throughout this show. There was not a segment or I didn't feel like, well, I better pay close attention to this. You know, it held me because I knew something could happen that I'm going to want to comment on. Right? I'm not watching it like, you know, an average viewer. I'm watching it from the eyes of perspective of a producer. And I thought that's one of the things, with the exception, I think, two, maybe three segments. Every one of these segments had that element of surprise or anticipation, urgency built into it.

And again, not to blow smoke, but that's how it should be done. I thought that the segment between Sammy Zane and Cody Rhodes was one of the most ballsy segments first off that WW has put on some time just because of how precious those fan reactions are to both Sammy Zane and Cody Rhodes right now in relation to this bloodline story where there's kind of a 1A and a 1B of the bloodline story with Cody and Sammy and they weave them together in a way that got a lot of people talking.

And, you know, looking at that graph, if we could get it up one more time here, Steve, I'm curious what your take on this is, Eric, when people see on social media, oh, man, Cody Rhodes and Sammy Zane are going at it for the first time. They're doing a little verbal spar here. That's a really dramatic increase. We see how much do you think comes from social media buzzing? about something than getting people to tune in instantaneously like that.

I don't know. I just don't know. And I don't know that anybody does. I don't know if there's ever been any real study on that or research on that. I'm sure somebody has and I don't know about it, but I don't know how accurate it is. So I honestly don't know. My instinct says, eh, not that much.

You're either sitting down and watching or you're not. if you decide to skip Monday Night Raw and go outside and play with your grandson, it's not like somebody's going to hit you up on your phone and go, hey, you're missing, you know, Cody Rose and Sarasane. Oh, I'm going to run back in the house and turn it on. No. Now, if you're flipping through the channels,

and chances are, you know, the audience has been conditioned since Nitro because I created it, this format, the crossover format was, which was a big issue for Nitro when it was the first two two hour show out there. That crossover was killer. You know, it was really important. I just don't, you know, could somebody have been flipping around at home or just not paying attention and gotten a text or an email?

Yeah, maybe. But what are we talking about in terms of real numbers? I think, I think that's one of those magical unicorns that people know, that believe exists, but don't know. how to catch. I don't know that it's true. By default, because I don't know, I'll say to some degree, that's safe. But I think anybody that places too much emphasis on that is kidding. I guess I just wonder, because you just said, like, this is an unadvertised segment here, essentially, what's going on between Cody and Sammy. How do 300,000 plus people just decide arbitrarily they're going to tune in on a whim like that? It's a crossover. It's 9 o'clock.

straight up. That's what you figured it too. Okay. Nine o'clock straight up. Okay. People start looking around it. That's why you need to hold them for the exact same reason. The reason I talked about earlier, that's why your crossover has to hold the audience.

In this case, it increased the audience. I used to use the cruiser weights division to do it. I would start my crossover segment at 858 and make sure that I was in heated action at 9 o'clock and it would carry me through to about 912, which is the majority of the quarter hour. um that's how i did it but in this case because it's cody and sammy i think far more people were probably tuning in at nine o'clock maybe they couldn't they don't typically watch the first hour and they pick it up in the second hour and mls number 65084 equal healthy lenders the five-star reviews are in and it's confirmed save with conred dot com can save you thousands

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I think it was because Sammy and Cody were in that crossover, which held them, certainly. If those same people were, you know, tuning in at 9 o'clock and saw matches that didn't have any story behind it or just a random dream match, you probably wouldn't see that bump. And that's great perspective to offer there because that's not even initially crossing my mind there at the top.

So what else stood out to you about this raw show? Is there anything else in particular? The women were a big part of this show. They were a big focal point over the course of this show, building for both the women's world championship set up at WrestleMania and the elimination chamber as well. No, I think they did a great job. I mean, the main event actually grew.

The last quarter hour of Monday Night, well, actually grew from the previous quarter hour. How many times do you see that? You know, in a three-hour show, or in AEW's case, a two-hour show. You know, I've seen a few graphs of AEW, but typically they lose audience throughout the entire two-hour period. I'm sure there are some exceptions to that. But I would say out of ten shows, seven of them are going to be a gradual loss of audience from the beginning to the end. and we don't have the quarterly hours yet for dynamite this week in particular,

but we did have you watch it back, as you alluded to earlier here. And I'm curious your assessment of it out of the gate because I thought it was a very interesting choice to start the show with the four-on-four tag match in which they did, which involved our friend Jeff Jarrett, which, by the way, we should say this off the onslaught two. best wishes to the Jarrett family in the aftermath of the loss of Jerry Jarrett. But it's pretty wild to see Jeff out there just killing it at the level that he is right now.

And he opened up this show, which, to their credit, it piggybacked off the ending of last week's dynamite, starting with something involving the acclaimed this particular week and having them. And that's interrupted, John. It's really neat. But that's a, you just hit on some. You know that because you saw. the previous week. But you didn't get a recap.

I got you. And nobody, it was not even mentioned. If it was, it was not mentioned in a very compelling manner because I don't remember it. That to me looked like a random match.

Now, hardcore AW fans say, yeah, but if you'd watch the show, you'd already know. That's not the point. The point is you want to build an audience. You want someone

who's never watched the show before to go, hmm, I hear a lot about this show. I think I'm going to check it out. And in doing so, have an enjoyable experience. how do you do that you make what they're watching interesting and important and compelling and if

i'm i guess i'm even more aghast if that's the right word um if this match was following something that had happened to previous week that means it's episodic in nature why would you not execute it to really drive home the episodic nature of it why don't you tie it together tell us what happen. Show us what happened. Okay, you don't want to show the match. Show me stills. Show me something that makes this opening match matter. And they didn't. It has nothing to do with the talent in the ring. I think the world of Jeff Jared, he's having fun out there and he's doing a great job. He loves heat. He's everything you can hope for in a heel right now. However, that match to me was random. Why did I feel like it was random? Why did I feel like it was

random if it's coming off of something that happened last week for god's sake wake up somebody wake up tony con and tell them that wrestling is episodic in nature please just call them tell them i don't care what you do it's episodic and now you've got something that clearly was a result of something that happened the previous week and i didn't even know about it that's an not how you grow an audience fans folks it was the big ending of the week before too it was the empire strikes back ending of dynamite last week where the acclaims shockingly lost the tag titles to the gun club and uh yeah i i think if there was a really effective promo video building into that four on four to start the show it could have been really really well

executed and at least in letting the audience into what they are seeing here What did you make of the threading of the A story going on in the company right now, MJF and Brian Danielson in particular? Yeah, I watched that because now you've got two great talents, right? I mean, you've got, I mean, Brian Danielson, I think the world of them, really. As a performer, everybody should know how I feel about MJF as a. performer i think he's in his own universe right now in many respects um i think they did a good job i think it would be a little too early to heat that up too much because then you've got nowhere to go with it right you're building towards what is it march fifth i think or march third something

so you know they've still got three or four weeks to go and you've got to kind of pace yourself you want to build episodically towards it and i think the promo that that brian did was good. It wasn't a great promo, but it was really good, and it was believable. It made that match feel important. So I think in that sense, they did a good job,

better than adequate, based on the timing. Now, next week, if you listen to Tom DeShane and talk about how storylines have to progress and build, next week, it should get a little hotter. the week after that should get a little hotter.

The week after that, if we're getting close to the pay-per-view, should be red-hot going into that pay-per-view. So we'll see. But I think they did, given the timing, I think they did a good job with it. Now, Eric, before we dive any further into Dynamite, we did get a question there from Mick Mac. He said, Eric, has that a green screen?

Now, you see, the thing is Eric is on location right now. He's in Florida. He's not home. It is Eric Bischoff, this is strictly business, and you're a businessman. You still got to get letters out. You got to get stuff sent. And thankfully, you are using our pals over at stamps.com. Because as we know, in 2023, we're always on the run.

We're always in different places. We're doing our work out of our home offices. Well, Stamps.com lets you print your own postage and shipping labels right from your home or office wherever you're traveling. It's ready to go in minutes so you can get back. to running your business or whatever you may need it for as quickly as possible. Eric, how beneficial has Stamps.com been for you? For me, especially because of where I live,

it's a 40-minute drive to the post office, a 40-minute drive home. So if I need to go buy stamps, looking at an hour and 20 minutes out of my day, and oh, man, if it's 20 degrees outside or 10 below zero and a blizzard, that makes that hour and 20 minutes feel even longer. With stamps, they'll come to your house. Yeah, you can print stamps off on your own computer. You can print labels off and put them on your boxes and your packages going out. But they'll come to your house and pick it up.

So you're not only saving a lot of money because, oh, by the way, when you ship something, once you're on board, you can go and look and see who is the best service, who's the best delivery service at what price. So you're guaranteed the best pricing you can get. And you do it within two minutes. You log on, you get ready to ship your stuff, you search and see who's going to offer you the best price, pick them, and off you go. And like I said, they'll come to your house. The only thing that could be better is if they bring a pizza, you know maybe indian food in your case i know you're a big fan lately of that but well that they'd have they'd have to go a long way to find indian food in kote in wyoming they'd have to go

to billings or denver but the point is when it comes to saving money well let's start with saving time because time is money saving time saving money and convenience there's there's no there's no service better yeah as eric mentioned you can use stamps dot com to print postage wherever you do your business all you need computer and a printer that's it they'll even send you a free scale so you have everything you need to get started and if you need a package pickup as eric alluded to you can easily schedule it just by going into your stamps dot com dashboard and we want to help you out here at strictly business set your business up for success when you get started with stamps dot com today sign up with promo code bischoff for a special offer that includes a four

week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code Bischoff. A four-week trial, free postage, digital scale at www.w.com forward slash Bischoff. Thank you to you to Stamps.com for sponsoring this show. This is something that I'm excited to utilize soon. And I hope that you do as well. as we welcome our newest partner to Strictlybusiness Stamps.com. Okay, Eric, let's continue here on the dynamite discussion before we wrap things up on Strictly Business. There was a really interesting decision to close this show with the women.

They have had an angle going with Dr. Britt Baker and Jamie Hater, Saraya, and Tony Storm. The two of them just recently turned heel. the women's positioning on AW Dynamite has been a pretty hot topic in discourse among wrestling fans. They usually find themselves right in the 930 slot pretty consistently every single week for the most part. But they were in the main event segment this week. Again, we don't have the numbers there. But from your standpoint, as someone who does not watch every single week, how did that flow with the rest of the show? It's interesting. That's an interesting question.

Go back and watch it again and just watch the crowd. Turn off the volume. Don't listen to your announcers. Don't even really pay that close of attention to the match. Pay very close attention to the audience. And there's your story. There's your answer to your question. It didn't work.

That's not how you want to end a show with people sitting on their hands. Now, is it a talent issue? I don't think so. Is it a story issue or lack of? Compelling story, AEW fans. Compelling story. Something that makes the rest of the 90% of the people that watch wrestling enjoy the product. Not what you and your fellow 10%ers who are hardcore,

die-in-the-wall AEW fans. I'm talking about the other 90% of the audience who just enjoys the product and wants to be entertained, not necessarily because there's a five-star Dave Meltzer match involved. Not to suggest that this match was, but it wasn't a bad match, but there's just nothing compelling behind of the characters weren't compelling. The story leading up to it wasn't compelling. If it would have been, the audience would have been on their feet, much like they were several times throughout the episode.

They were on their feet. but they were pretty much they were pretty quiet pretty quiet and that's the other thing I noticed in watching this show I think there's definitely two different audiences I've been saying things like you know Tony Conn and AEW

have 100% of the niche audience that likes that internet wrestling booking style the Dave Meltzer dirt sheet booker of the year's style there is a certain segment of the audience that does enjoy that and AEWW has 100% of those people. Now what they need to do is figure out how to get the other 90% of the audience if they want to build their shout out.

Conrad had an interesting point on 83 weeks last week or this past week. He said, look, Eric, maybe Tony doesn't feel the need to be competitive. Cool. He doesn't need the money. That's for sure. He doesn't have anybody breathing down his back to my knowledge. It's his money. and he's doing what he likes to do with that.

And God bless him for being able to do that. I envy him, and I mean that sincerely. That would be a nice position to be in. But unless this is just a vanity project or a hobby for him, if he actually does have to prove results, if not to his, well, he doesn't have a banker. So, you know, whether his dad is interested or not, I have no idea. But I know one person who is, I know one organization who is very interested in whether or not there's any growth potential.

And that's TBS ad sales. I guarantee you, I can't say I guarantee you, I'm not there. But I would find it unbelievable if the people in ad sales, presumably in New York, that's where it used to be, are going, yeah, this wrestling is getting 100% of everything we ever hope for. we don't need to make any more money with that commercial inventory. I just don't think that conversation happens. So why Tony may not feel the need to actually compete with AEW

and simply want to provide an alternative to the great storytelling that we're seeing right now in AEW by putting together internet-centric matches and matchups with a lot of blood and a lot of violence and that ECW-ish vibe to, it. Maybe that's okay for Tony and maybe Tony doesn't need the money or doesn't care about the money, but I guarantee you at some point, maybe not next week, maybe not even for their own renewal. But at some point, that beachfront property that you have Wednesday night and prime time, somebody's going to be looking at that property and wondering if they're making as much money off of it as they could. And that's when growing your audience becomes important.

I don't know how I got off on that tangent. I want to say I do think that one of Paul Levex's strongest points as a showrunner, and we can lean into his experience that he had with NXT, even, which was on a much more microscale, is that show-to-show storytelling where things play out over a period of time and then in the actual show itself. He hits you overhead with those storytelling elements,

but not in a way that's necessarily obnoxious. And I do think that is something he does very well that maybe even in recent years, Vince McMahon didn't necessarily do quite as well. And I think with Dynamite, that's just my opinion here, I think with Dynamite, there are so many pieces there

that can make it structurally a really fantastic pro wrestling show. And from an in-ring standpoint, I as a fan enjoy it quite a bit. But I do think, to your point, just taking a step back and maybe seeing, how can we connect point A to point B? Like, if Ruby Soho had started that show off with even a 60-second backstage vignette, just talk about how she can't wait to get her hands on Soraya because of this.

And giving that backstory for maybe a lapsed audience member or someone like yourself, that would have served that main event pretty substantially. Wouldn't you agree? Well, that depends on Ruby and her ability to do a compelling promo. The promo that I was feeling really good about until the very end on AEW, was Renee was interviewing Wardlow. And I can't remember who Wardleau was talking about. It's a match he's got coming up.

Oh, Samoa Joe. And they did such, first of all, Renee is awesome. She's really, really good at what she does. She's like a female version of Chris Van Fleet, in my opinion. She's really good. She's probably better in a long-form environment than she is in a short-form, you know, wrestling, you know, interview kind of thing. But that promos, and I was like really excited for AEW, like really saying, okay,

they're getting it. This is a, this is a personal issue now between Wardlow and Samoa Joe. And Wardlow talking about his father growing up and then being estranged from him for such a big part of his life and then finally coming together, just getting to know his dad and then finding out almost shortly thereafter that his dad had stage four cancer and then passed away. Telling that story was such, it was so real. It was, I related, you know, most of us who are in our, in your 40s and 50s and in my case, 60s can relate to losing a parent or somebody close to us in that way.

And when Wardlow talked about how he grew his hair out and that was the thing that, you know, Samoa Joe, he took it away from him. man he had me that's storytelling that promo was freaking that was a there was a 9.8 on a scale of 10 until the last 20 or 30 seconds and it totally disengaged me because ward low went from having this intimate conversation with rene which is by the way we talked about generally the different types of narrative you know there's a difference between a backstage promo when you're catching somebody before the ring or right after the ring or maybe you're catching them, you know, 20 minutes before they go into a match,

whatever. There's a difference. Hold on. Can you hear that? You're good. I mean, Scott Steiner's coming after you, but other than that, you're all right. And Wardlow did a fantastic job until the end. And what I was saying before the sirens interrupted me. When you're doing those sit-down interviews, you're away from the arena, you're not backstage, you're not getting ready to go wrestle, you haven't just wrestled. This is something Mordalo was talking about that's going to happen in the weeks to come. And it's that intimate one-on-one vibe where you get a little bit, you get to know the talent a little bit more, right?

It's not, well, coming up at the end of the segment, I'm going to kick your ass and all of us are going to have each other's back. A typical wrestling promo. We've seen like two million of them this year. And that sit down that word little did with Renee was so intimate. It was kind of like, okay, now we're getting to know a little. We're getting to know something that's really sharing an important part of his life. And then he cuts to a wrestling promo, including the mean face. It's like, what in the hell?

Who is directing me? this who's producing this thing because you had me you had me i was invested and then you then you made me turn around and walk away with a typical wrestling promo and i'd like to know who the director that was or in this case probably the producer because somebody says to say whoa let's do that again only be real don't be wrestler face mean guy you keep it real he went from a great intimate, compelling, really emotional-based narrative to a backstage promo. It lost me completely. And it could have been fixed so easily.

Again, it's not the talent's fault. Talent is green. A lot of these talents haven't really worked with people that are good at that kind of thing. So they haven't had a chance to learn from people like Jericho. and others who are, you know, who are just really good at it and they have been good at it for so long. They probably forgot how they got good at it.

They're learning on the job. And I'm, I have empathy for that. I know what that feels like. I've been there. I've done that. But that's why you have producers that know what they're doing. That's why you have a director that's there going, uh, close.

Finished off too much like a wrestling guy. Finish off like Wardlow. And that sit-down that you're referring to, it actually was with Jim Ross, Renee. I'm sorry, it was, sorry. But I bring that up because I think J.R. is the perfect person to have in a sit-down segment like that with Wardlow where, truthfully, I think that's like where J.R.'s biggest strengths are today in broadcasting, doing those sorts of segments,

those one-on-one's in-depth character sit-downs. I think he thrives in that. I think giving Wardle something to feed off of was really well done. And I understand your point that you're bringing up, too. I think Jim complimented him very well in that. No, and I don't know why I said, Renee, I must have been thinking about another promotion. She was in another segment.

She did it. And again, she's really good. But no, it was Jim Ross. And of all people that know how to do, you know, one of those segments. Now, Jim wasn't producing it, I doubt, or directing it. Um, he probably should have been, my opinion. But whoever was, that should have never made air because it didn't do him any good. he was right there on the finish line and the producer let him drop the ball

very fascinating insight there and it's maybe not something you think about right on the surface level but if you dive a little deeper it's it's certainly just one of those critical elements of helping build characters to get the audience to care about them and want to tune in to see them wrestle next week or get that come up and stand the line it's all if if nothing else I just I don't know why I don't know why I care I don't I shouldn't actually

You love the art at the end of the day Eric You do it's nothing wrong with that I just wish I think I said it in 83 weeks I hope I hope WWE looks back at this The last six months of this bloodline storyline

And go okay how did How did this work so well Because there are I mean, again, going back to Tom DeShane, there are elements within that story that you can replicate. The ideas are going to be different. The talent's going to be different, but the beats along the way can provide a template so that you can take out bloodline, insert this guy. Take out this guy, insert this woman. Take out this woman and insert that guy.

You can replicate those formulas once you figure out what they are. You don't have to use the same ingredients every time, but, the formula pretty much stays the same. The beats along the way. I, you know, Conrad's aim, 661 said, Conrad, and he did say, Conrad said, hear me out. Maybe Tony doesn't want AEW to grow. I, I, that is such an abstract alien thought. I can't even process it.

But maybe that's true. And again, I'll go back to what I said earlier. Tony may not want it to grow, but I'm pretty sure the beach, the people that own that beachfront property that he's renting due or actually paying him to rent on. But at some point, growth becomes necessary because

in a television business, you're either growing or you're slowly dying. I think that is the perfect point to make here as we wrap up, Eric. Because I'm slowly dying. He's having my ass. Hey, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate your insight on this. I know all of our

fans do as well. Again, guys, subscribe. 83 weeks.com, you'll get Strictly Business pushed right to your device wherever you listen to your podcast or sign up at free shows.com. Normally you'll get early access to that. We went live today. We're live, pal. It was a lot of fun. We appreciate all your interactions. Anything else you'd like to add here, Eric? No, man. I was good to be back in the saddle again. I'll be heading back to Wyoming here on Saturday and be right back into my tree house doing what I do. So I look forward to seeing you next week. Absolutely, my friend. Thank you, everyone, to tuning in to Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff.

We will see you next time.