JNLister

I'm sure I've posted this here before, but this is an interview I did with Sean Herbert just after he'd sold the channel and it was rebranded:

Quote

 

With Britain’s TWC Fight! channel now rebranded as a UK version of the Fight Network, I spoke this week to Sean Herbert, the man behind the channel since its 2004 launch. Though he was unable to talk about the specifics behind the rebranding, he was able to talk through some of the issues behind the channel’s running which many viewers are unaware of.

 

What were the best and worst decisions you made at TWC?

 

There was never any one bad decision. I suppose when we launched, our costs were very high, as it was all new to us: we had too many editors, we were paying too much for programming, and or workflow wasn’t as tight as it is now. All these improvements come with time though, so there was nothing we really could have done differently at the time, without being able to see the future. I suppose for my own sake, I would probably stay completely away from posting on the internet.

 

I guess the best decisions we made were knowing when to pull back and stop losing money in the hope it would turn around. We reduced costs by approx 50% going into 2005, and actually turned a profit by just showing the programmes that did well for us in 2004, and doing ratings-based deals for most new content, instead of a flat fee. We are in business to make money – not to lose money while building a brand, as that’s never guaranteed. We always kept a tight control on costs, which, despite internet speculation of doom & gloom whenever we pulled back and reduced content/costs, has enabled us to last almost 4 years now!

 

What effect did the loss of TNA have on the channel?

 

It was a big loss, but it was never our highest rated show to begin with. It also coincided with our re-branding to TWC Fight!, so we had just started showing a lot of new MMA programming anyway, and we had a whole new audience replacing the loss of TNA viewers. It was definitely unfortunate, as it was our best produced show, but it was bound to happen at some stage as TNA grew.

 

What prompted the switch in focus from purely wrestling to including MMA as well?

 

The rise in popularity of MMA, and the decline in popularity of wrestling worldwide. We also found that there was less & less quality wrestling content even available to fill our schedule, and a lot of the promotions we started showing in 2004 were out of business: FWA, 3PW, GAEA, Wildside, MLW, etc. It was a necessary, and fruitful, decision.

 

Did being a wrestling channel have any effect (positive or negative) on ad sales, or was it purely down to viewing figures?

 

Mainly down to figures. Our audience is primarily males aged 16-34, which is THE key demographic that advertisers seek. As long as we delivered that audience for them, then there was no real difficulty at all.

 

BARB’s rating system (the UK equivalent of Nielsen, which produces figures based on a sample of just 5,000 homes) made it difficult to measure audiences on a niche channel like TWC. Did you know this going on, or was it an unforeseen problem?

 

We were fully aware of this going in, as the Dolphin TV managing directors have been in the broadcast industry for years. (Dolphin is a broadcasting firm involved in the channel’s management.) It’s a known issue that all niche channels complain about but have to deal with: the industry has changed in the last ten years, but BARB hasn’t changed or updated with it. Sure, BARB worked when there were 5 or 6 channels – but now with hundreds of satellite channels, 5000 homes are far from representative of what the UK are watching!

 

Several programmes were dropped because they had low ratings and therefore you couldn’t sell advertising for them. Would it have been possible to sell packages of advertising across the schedule based on the channel’s overall figures instead?

 

That’s how we already sell all our advertising. For example, if we sell a campaign to ‘Lucozade’, and promise to deliver 180,000 (18-34 male) viewers to them, that means we schedule their adverts during our shows until we deliver that number of viewers. And we HAVE to deliver those numbers, so ‘Lucozade’ will never be left short; poorer ratings might just mean it takes us longer to deliver. If it takes 2 months, so be it. With some shows rating Zero (that is, no viewers in homes measured by BARB), it means we can’t reach that figure, and we’re wasting potential advertising time. And it’s still costing us money to air that show because of broadcasting costs, satellite time, listing feed, editing, admin and so on. So not only do we not make money from a ‘Zero’ rated show, we actually lose money, as the channel’s running costs still need to be paid. So if a show delivers very poor ratings, it gets dropped. It’s basic business.

 

Was TWC profitable over its lifetime?

 

It wasn’t in 2004, and it was in 2005 & 2006. It was around break-even in 2007, but for the last few months of 2007 we avoided buying any new programming, as we were negotiating with The Fight Network. We didn’t want to be buying any new content from September 2007 onwards as we didn’t know what the plan would be going forward, so couldn’t commit to any deals. That obviously affected our ratings as we ran a lot of repeats towards the end of 2007, but it was a necessity that we couldn’t then explain publicly.

 

Which were/are the highest rated shows on the channel?

 

World of Sport – it always has been since day one, consistently and by a considerable amount.

 

Was it a surprise that World of Sport did so well? Did it bring in a different audience to other shows?

 

Yes, generally it attracted an older demographic, but a lot of younger people and current fans also tuned in to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t really a surprise at all, since it attracted such a huge rating back in the day, there was bound to be a significant amount of people tuning in for nostalgia alone, and luckily they stayed tuned! I was more surprised that most other shows didn’t rate so well!

 

Will there ever be in-house productions like The Bagpipe Report again?

 

Likely not from TWC, but The Fight Network produce some fantastic in-house programming already, like One on One, Rough and Wrestling Reality, as well as daily Knockout News items. We are currently working with Redchurch productions in bringing viewers the latest UK news too, as was seen just this weekend with our pre-fight coverage of UFC 80 in Newcastle, with Ian Freeman interviewing various fighters! But it’s likely that TFN may produce something similar to the Bagpipe Report at some stage as they have lots of fresh & exciting plans & ideas for moving forward!

 

What variations did you find in the way British promotions dealt with the channel?

 

Some were more obviously far more professional than others in their approach to looking for a TV deal in the first place. RQW actually used an agency to approach us for a deal, which was a very professional approach, albeit not necessary, but a nice touch. On the flipside, despite having press and general contact info on our website, you’d be surprised how many people sent me private messages on various internet forums asking for a TV deal. They spouted all sorts of made-up statistics about the attendance for their shows (or their intended shows), complete with atrocious spelling and most (not just some) even forgetting to name their promotion or sign their own name at the end of their message! Sometimes I’d be lucky to get a website link.

 

From the British promotions we did do deals with, some were more organised & professional than others in the delivery of their shows for playout (some were frequently late, and the episodes had to be cancelled), and some were late with delivery of synopsis & duration information to us: anytime our weekly listings newsletter said “Listings Not Available” for a British promotion, it simply meant that they weren’t arsed e-mailing through a synopsis for their TV show. Yet sometimes I’d see the synopsis posted on the UKFF forum (which was obviously their priority over the SKY TV Guide), so we’d copy and paste it from there: unbelievable! And some didn’t adhere to censorship guidelines, and episodes had to be pulled. That said, anyone falling into this latter category didn’t last very long on the channel anyway.

 

What advice would you have for British promotions hoping to get on TV?

 

Let TV be your final goal. Concentrate on getting the crowds in the door (in addition to keeping your costs down), so you don’t lose money on your shows. And there’s no better promotion method than local postering and flyering (see All-Star & LDN as prime examples of how to draw crowds), and some local radio & newspaper ads only if you can afford it. If you’re consistently drawing good crowds, then slowly start buying some branded equipment like a ring apron, and maybe a small set/entranceway. Then try to find a COST EFFECTIVE way of getting your shows taped – usually film/media students will do it for cheap, as they want experience, but most of them haven’t a clue either, so don’t be afraid to tell them to bugger off if they do a poor job.

 

Good lighting is paramount, and a good wide shot angled down on the ring. If you don’t have a good wide shot, and use close-up shots too much, then the editing will give off a cramped feeling and be hard to watch. Get a few shows taped and get them produced onto DVD, and don’t approach a TV company until you are happy with your DVD product. Get some good graphic templates together that you can use for all of your name-bars, replays, transitions, opening credits, etc. This is worth investing in and only has to be done once, because if it looks good, it can be used on all DVDs and any other video output. Try to find a few unsigned bands to provide music, as you can’t be using commercial tracks, as it comes across as unprofessional and will leave the TV channel liable for PRS (performing rights society) fees, so they’ll likely dismiss it there and then.

 

And something people always underestimate is sound: take a hard line from your mixing desk into one of your cameras, because in most indie promotions , you can’t hear a word they’re saying once someone takes the mic. And finally, if you’re happy with your picture, editing, sound quality, music, graphics, crowds and set, then contact a TV company by formal letter providing info such as: where you’re based, how long you’ve been running, what crowds you usually draw, can you produce weekly & episodic TV, etc. Don’t send a badly written PM on a forum!

 

You were a fairly regular and often outspoken poster on internet forums during TWC’s time on air? Did this help or hurt the channel?

 

Maybe it hurt the internet’s public perception of TWC a little bit, but our ratings were never reflected by what was going on on the net, as is usually the case with attendance at shows too. The internet is not the bigger picture. I was put under an immediate spotlight when news of TWC broke, scrutiny for everything that was going on on-air, and took lot of unnecessary (in my opinion) abuse; but I didn’t handle it very well either. Myy instinct was to be defensive, and that didn’t do me any favours.

 

Most viewers and fans have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, and what’s involved with running a channel (and it was my first time too!), and we were doing licensing deals with some of the craziest people I have ever dealt with in any walk of life. I would get wound up easily, because people thought it was as simple as “get old AJPW matches!” There are about half a dozen variables in doing a deal, that need to be considered and in place, so it was frustrating at the time. I was a fan for years before launching TWC, and I was also on the net for years having slagging matches with people on various forums, as most people do (especially wrestling fans). Then  I suddenly had to stop and/or take abuse and respond politely & professionally. Iit was all new to me at the time, but it’s 4 years later now, and I like to think I’ve improved.

 

How representative was/is the TWC internet of the channel’s audience?

 

I have gotten some good constructive advice from some of the more intelligent posters on the TWC forums and the UKFF, which we always took onboard. But of we listened to the internet alone and started airing some of the smaller, more niche promotions, we’d be marketing the channel towards a very VERY niche audience (and we’re niche enough as it is!), and we’d have been well out of business by now!

 

One or two more obscure programmes are fine, like CZW, and the odd IWA: Mid South ‘Supercard’, as it brings variety into the schedule, but if we showed any more than that, it would affect our overall ratings, which are already tight. So it’s all about finding the right balance between mass appeal (World of Sport, Cage Fighter, TNA), UK/home-based programming (LDN, UK MMA, RQW, IWW) and niche shows (CZW, Gladiator Challenge, IWA, GAEA). It’s easier said on the internet than done in reality. Despite all the criticisms, we have lasted 4 years and are growing, and I have made a very healthy living out of the business I have been a fan of since 1986.

 

Why are Reform UK and GB News suddenly so interested in the opinions of a foreigner?

This could be General Politics, but it's a Tory cunt so (shrug.emoji):
 

On 3/7/2024 at 7:19 PM, SuperBacon said:

Saw these two on Twitter and thought worth sharing, as they both sound really interesting. 

I'll buy them and add to them the ever increasing unread pile. Get to them in 5 years or so.

Savage book is a weird one in that the stuff about his WWF run is the least interesting (and gets a few big picture things wrong). There's some good stuff on his family and pre-WWF career, plus some interesting bits where they talk to people you wouldn't normally hear from like his robe designer.

https://prowrestlingbooks.com/macho-man-the-untamed-unbelievable-life-of-randy-savage-by-john-finkel/

There used to be a response that got posted to this question every single time until it got so overhyped that people realised it was probably wishful thinking and getting excited over over something fresh. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

Played The Wolves which is somewhat thematic but basically a strategic area control game where you each have a pack of wolves. Your actions are fairly simple: move your wolves around, build dens, upgrade dens to lairs, and "persuade" other wolves to join your pack.

All fairly simple but with a brain-burning core mechanic. The spaces on the board are each a specific terrain type. You each have a set of five two-sided terrain tiles, plus a unique one per player that's a particular terrain on both sides. To do an action, you need to have one, two or three terrain tiles (depending on the action) matching the space where you want to do the action. You then flip over those tiles, leaving you with a different set of tiles for your next action. It means you have to think quite hard to plan ahead and keep your options open, particularly as you do two actions on your turn.

It's an enjoyable if not groundbreaking game, though the rulebook is not great and some of the placement rules are ambiguous and fiddly (though make sense with better wording). We're playing a follow-up game on Board Game Arena to make sure we properly get to grips with what moves are and aren't legal.

1977: Mick McManus says "getting on a bit, in me late 40s now, going to selflessly put a couple of guys over on TV and make some new stars. Just a couple, mind, or it won't mean as much."

2013: Upon his death it's revealed that he kayfabed his birth date and in 1977 he was in fact 57 years old.

What are the odds George Galloway gets sworn in at the Commons on Monday afternoon and goes into the Celeb Big Brother house Monday night?

Epic thread on hot wrestling crowds: 

Played Marine Worlds, the first expansion for Ark Nova.

Short version is that it adds a decent bit of variety and asymmetry so there's more of a challenge in figuring out the situation in each game and the best order to do things. It's definitely one for experienced Ark Nova players only but I'd say after your first game with the expansion it wouldn't add any extra playing time. 

Long version, the new stuff is:

* You replace two of your five action cards with new versions (there's about half a dozen variants for each card) that offer slightly better powers in both standard and upgraded variants. For example, my association card in basic form gave me an X-token every time I used it for a lower action than the slot it was in (eg used it for the 3-power 'get a zoo association' when it was in the 4 slot.) When upgraded, I could make donations at a £1 discount for every X-token I had. There's a draft to get these cards, so picking ones that work together well with each other, your map special rules (if you're using variable maps) and your bonus cards is a big part of the challenge.

* There's a new category of animals, namely sea creatures. They're a bit fiddly as you need to put them in a new special enclosure, an aquarium. The benefits are that you can have multiple animals in an aquarium so they are more efficient for space on your board, and some of them have a reef feature. This means that every time you put a reef animal in your zoo, you get to repeat the placement bonus of all your other reef animals. It's a nice touch, but you really need to go all in on an aquarium-base strategy to make it worthwhile.

* Some cards have a wave symbol which means when they come out into the display, one of the existing cards gets removed and everything moves along. It's basically a thematic way to make sure you get through more of the deck in each game and to introduce a little more jeopardy in waiting to take a card in the display.

* There's now an extra type of university that you can take instead of one of the normal three (two research icons/one research and two reputation/one reputation and increased hand limit). The new one means you can select one of six tokens which are one research and one animal icon (one of each type, first come first served.) When you take these you also get to hunt through the deck and take the first card of that animal type. How useful this is depends on if and when you are chasing a conservation project or end game bonus that's about collecting a particular animal icon -- I wound up just taking the normal three universities.

* There's also some upgraded player pieces - mortar boards for the reputation tracker, tickets for the appeal tracker, something not very obvious for the conservation tracker, and animal pieces in place of the cubes you use to mark conservation project achievements (and thus unveil a bonus on your player board.)

1 hour ago, Thefatduck said:

Kids are the best.
They believe and love it when you do too. 
 

Kid at the show I went to last night asked his dad if it was real and his dad blatantly lied.

No, he didn't say "Yes, it's all real."

He said "No, it's all fake and I write the scripts."

Had a weekend away with my games group so plenty of first-time plays:

That’s So Clover (sister to the maths game That’s So Clover) is a bit of a mix of Just One and Codenames. It’s cooperative and you are randomly assigned four square cards on a two-by two grid. Each square has a word on each edge, meaning each side of your grid has two words. You have to write a one word clue on the board on each side of the grid to connect the two words.

Once you’re done, you take off all the cards and add in a fifth card (that you didn’t use). The other players have to recreate the board, meaning they figure out the four cards you had, where they were placed, and which way round each card was. At this point you quickly discover your clues are considerably less obvious and unambiguous than you thought!

Deathwish is a very silly card collection game where you are trying to contract diseases, which you do by collecting a disease card with a colour and a varying number of skulls. You also need to collect a “how I contracted it” card and the relevant number of symptoms cards, all of the matching colour. However, you have hand limits for both the contraction and symptoms cards, so you run the risk that somebody else gets the disease you were targeting before you have enough cards. It’s pretty thin, undemanding gameplay, but works because of the very juvenile card contents (poonomic plague, LOLera, Radioactive Poop, etc).

Endless Winter: Paleoamaricans is themed a bit like a post-Ice Age variant of Stone Age but is a full-on mix of different game mechanics. You build a Dominion-style deck of cards and your turn is choosing one of five sets of actions, each of which has “do this as many times as you like/can afford” then “do this once” and then “do this if you were the first person to choose this action during this round.” All the actions work and get you towards scoring points very differently, eg some are set collection, some are area control, some are building your deck, some are “get points if you’ve taken particular actions.” I’d play it again as it’s quite neat once you get the hang of the mechanics, but it’s definitely one where your first few turns on the first play leave you with no idea what to do.

Don’t Get Got isn’t a board game as such but instead each player gets a series of secret challenges to perform over time such as a weekend gathering. You have six challenges, first to three wins, but if you attempt one and somebody correctly accuses you of trying to complete the challenged, you fail it and can’t complete it. It’s a wide range of stuff from “get somebody to look inside a toilet cistern” to “offer to show somebody a picture of you and a celebrity on your phone but it’s actually a picture of this card” to “make somebody discover one of their own items inside a jelly.” If nothing else, it’s very revealing to see who gets competitive and takes it seriously.

Stationfall was basically a disaster. It’s set on a spaceship that’s about to blow up and has a wide range of characters that each have their own goals, some of which involve escaping the ship, while others involve uncovering military secrets, blackmailing people, carrying out a secret research project, while some characters want to protect the ship or cause chaos or damage stuff.

The main mechanic is confusing because you are secretly playing as one of the characters and trying to achieve their goals. (You get a reward/power/benefit for revealing your identity but then leave yourself open to everyone else trying to stop you getting the goals.) However, you can control any character on your turn by placing from your limited supply of influence cubes. The idea is that it’s about navigating the chaos as different players do different stuff to the characters and you have to try to figure out what other people will do with them and if that will get you towards your goal.

Problem one is that there’s just way too much info you need to know, so I suspect it’s the best part of an hour’s teach in good circumstances. Problem two is that we had a player who would not stop interrupting and asking questions (usually stuff already covered or that the teacher planned to cover later on in a logical order) so it wound up two full hours teaching, by which time no game could overcome the resentment we’d built up. Problem three was that you only have around 12-15 turns, some of which are literally “move a character one space”, so there’s very little feeling of control or any intentional action being achievable. It’s the classic game type where if you play it 10 times with the same group it’s probably great, but that’s never going to happen in a world of thousands of games.

Finally Magnate is a twist on the familiar city building game with the usual residential/industry/shops/office options and the various effects such as people wanting to live next to shops but not factories, shops wanting to be near houses and offices, etc. The twist is that you are a property developer and all you care about is making land more valuable by adding buildings and tenants and selling it at a profit.

There’s a lovely market mechanism by which the actions people take each round (such as buying, selling, attracting tenants, advertising, etc) affect the speed at which the price of land goes up (as it becomes more scarce), the likelihood of a market crash, which is measured on a tracker, and the increasing scale of the inevitable crash. As in real life, the increasing risk of a crash means its sensible to sell your land, but than in turn makes the crash even more likely. When the crash happens prices drop and everyone has to sell at the new prices, then whoever has the most money wins. It’s a lovely mix of calculated risks and timing the market and even has a tutorial mode that might make it a good gateway game as “a bit like Monopoly but not shit.”

Possibly of interest, though I suspect there won't be too much new for readers of this thread: I started a site called cricketquestions.com which aims to explain tactics/concepts/rules, mainly for people who know the basics of cricket but want to understand more. (It's primarily a project for me to practice the SEO and technical side of creating a site that can eventually generate some ad income without too much maintenance.)

1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

 I found the wrestling to be a tad disappointing due the closeness it was filmed in and the shaky cam.

TBF, that's pretty accurate to the World Class production style. I did love how, despite the timeline inaccuracies, there were a lot of little touches of authenticity that were nice treats for wrestling fans despite being unnecessary to the plot, like Harley Race's ring gear or Buddy Roberts having his post-hair match headgear. And the outside of the Sportatorium in particular was spot on to the point that if it hadn't been demolished, you'd assume it had been filmed there.

And Serena Deeb's did set up the greatest Dynamite Fite TV-exclusive commercial commentary line when Excalibur says "Deeb is a tremendous technical wrestler" and guest color commentator Punk just casually adds "And what a lovely head of hair."

Bromley Boys was surprisingly fun if you too dreamt of somehow becoming the manager of a sixth tier football team in the mid-80s despite being a child. Though it did turn out three years after its release that I was its nerdiest viewer to date:

12 minutes ago, JNLister said:

Just watched it.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

His dad's a cunt and all his brothers die.

 

But more seriously, it's very hard to judge as a wrestling fan because you not only know what's coming, but the fact there's stuff left out that's just as bad. The two minutes or so panning round the crowd outside the Sportatorium and filing in is arguably the highlight from a wrestling perspective as it just looks like the best place on earth to be in 1979.

Biggest weakness is that they don't always nail the difference between "winning the world title in a wrestling match is a work" and "being made world champion in the business is a competitive activity".

Just watched it.

PMQs begins. Starmer welcomes the mother of Brianna Ghey, murdered for being trans, to the public gallery.

Sunak, either not listening or not caring, responds to a question just moments later with his old standby "[Starmer] can't even identify what a woman is." Then follows up a question about raising taxes with a non-sequiter response about Starmer defending terrorists.

What a cunt.

On 2/4/2024 at 8:20 PM, TibBo said:

When I used to work at a quiet local pub, I found out that you could scam the 20p sweet machines with the turning handles, by wedging a matchstick in them and dropping a 1p in. I was never on shift to see the guy refill the machines and find all the bits of matchstick stuck inside sadly.

Most useful thing I learned at university was that these machines also work with a 1p coin wrapped in the film from the top flap of a cigarette packet. Would have been more useful if I smoked.

On 2/4/2024 at 3:14 PM, Devon Malcolm said:

y @Frankie Crisp

I'm not paying for carrier bags from the Co-Op. I don't mind paying for plastic ones from everywhere else but these are biodegradable so in my mind they're fine to nick. 

I'm happy to pay for them to use in the  food bin because they are basically the exact same thing as the caddy liners they sell but cheaper.

Just seen the amazing comparison of Ultimate Warrior coming out in 1990 and saying "Yeah, I know I accepted Hogan's challenge, but I've decided to step aside and let Bruno Sammartino take my place."