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UKFF Questions Thread V2


neil

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Sky were paying next to bugger all for it for a long time apparently. According to Simon Garfield's The Wrestling, it was something like £500 a tape in the late 80s/early 90s. 

 

Channel 4 made the decision to drop (well, not renew their contract with) the  WWF 3 weeks after they started showing it when Mae Young got her prosthetic tits out. They knew then it wasn't what they thought it was (probably thought it was still like the early 90s) and decided just to run out the contract. Hence moving to midnight with quite a lot of the contract to go to burn it off there.

Edited by PowerButchi
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Anyone remember the short period when they aired WCW Worldwide on Live and Dangerous, amongst all the baseball and golf and stuff? Quality. Channel 5 studio sport chat was the best, man.

Edited by AshC
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I don't know if it would have replaced Noel's House Party et al as Saturday Night entertainment

It could have been a segment on the House Party, with Mr Blobby as the new Big Daddy. Few would have known the difference.

Edited by Uncle Zeb
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I could understand the BBC having a problem with something like that but Channel 4?  They have always been the source for shock TV.

 

You'd think that, but I think they were caught off guard. Remember Heat was a family friendly show broadcast at 4pm on T4. They probably thought the PPVs would be in the same vein and would carry over that viewing demo of kids and the like. There were complaints after the Royal Rumble. Some for the terrible placement of breaks (I assume Channel 4 thought there would be natural gaps for them) some for Youngs fake tits, and some for brutal HHH vs Cactus Jack streetfight. Hence the move to 1:50am for Backlash so they could add in breaks without disjointing the show and meant they could do things like digitize blood like the did for X-pac, and edit out things like Trish Stratus going through a table.

 

This kind of thing was par for the course - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1165688.stm

 

 

From PowerSlam

 

 

 

Do you know why the WWF was taken off Channel 4 in late 2001?

Daniel Simpson

F.M. writes: The contract had expired.

The WWF/Channel 4 relationship was troubled from the start. We were told that C4 officials were horrified at the content of Royal Rumble 2000, the first pay-per-view the channel broadcast as part of the deal it struck with the WWF in late 1999 to broadcast selected pay-per-views and Heat (every Sunday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.).

Channel 4 was apparently unaware of the changes the WWF had made to its product in the previous two years. From what we understand, they thought it was the same safe, innocuous wrestling company of the 1991-1992 WWF craze era in the U.K. So, when Mae Young paraded around topless (she was actually wearing a prosthesis over her chest) in the Miss Rumble 2000 Swimsuit contest and Triple H bled heavily in his street fight with Cactus Jack and the two battered each other with weapons and landed on drawing pins, the C4 chiefs were aghast.

Channel 4 censored Backlash, the next WWF supercard it screened in April 2000. We received scores of complaints in Power Slam about the channel’s coverage of the event.

- See more at: http://www.powerslamonline.co.uk/updates/78/More-mail-questions-and-comments.htm#sthash.qLva6xhp.dpuf

Edited by PowerButchi
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Sidebar I did for FSM about the Channel 4 issues, which I include here mainly for the final couple of lines:

 

Throughout the 1990s Sky was the exclusive home of WWE programming in the UK, but with the business in the midst of the Attitude Era boom, Channel 4 decided to get in on the game in January 2000. It struck a two-year deal to not only carry the recently-launched Sunday Night Heat show (previously unaired in the UK) but also four pay-per-views a year.

 

At first everything was going great. Heat, which aired at 4pm as part of the youth-oriented T4 slot, drew 1.1 million viewers in its first week and reached 1.5 million in week two, roughly double what WCW was achieving on Channel 5.

 

The point of Channel 4 getting the shows was, of course, to attract viewers so it could sell advertising slots. Unfortunately nobody seemed to have given much thought to how this would work with live coverage of an event with no breaks. It was bad enough when the channel broke away for ads in between matches during the Royal Rumble show. But it was unforgivable when a ham-fisted production staffer dared to cut away in the middle of a Rock promo.

 

It wasn't just the viewers in for a surprise however. Whatever Channel 4 bosses thought pro wrestling was, the WWE product of 2000 was still filled with extremes. Not only did the Rumble title match between Triple H and Mick Foley feature blood, barbed wire and a bump into drawing pins, but the event also hosted a bikini contest between the roster's Divas.

 

Expectations were high among horny teenagers after an "unscripted" moment of toplessness the previous month, but they were met in horrific fashion as the geriatric Mae Young appeared to expose her sagging breasts. In fact they were prosthetics, but that was still enough to generate numerous complaints, particularly for parents of children who had watched Heat in the afternoon and recorded the Rumble.

 

With both content and commercials causing problems, Channel 4 switched tack for its next PPV broadcast, Backlash in April. It aired the show on a 50 minute delay, allowing it time to not only insert ad breaks, but to edit comment it deemed inappropriate for a show that, even though well past the watershed, it considered family viewing. Initial edits included the removal of shots of a bleeding wrestler and a freeze-frame rather than showing the Dudley Boys putting Trish Stratus through a table.

 

Channel 4 stuck to this approach for the rest of its contract, as well as making numerous edits to Heat to try to make it suitable for the afternoon slot. Eventually it gave up and moved it to late nights where viewing figures predictably tumbled.

 

It came as little surprise when the channel opted not to renew the contract at the start of 2002; indeed one unconfirmed rumour has it that the decision was effectively made immediately after the reaction to the Mae Young incident. Sky snapped up the deal and took the opportunity to make the four live shows the first US WWE events available on Sky Box Office.

 

WWE was by no means alone in experiencing content problems with UK broadcasters and regulators during this period however. Channel 5 aired WCW's WorldWide show in an early evening slot but, rather than edit out material it judged unsuitable for younger viewers such as chairshots, chose to cover the screen with starbursts filled with messages such as "KAPOW!", just like with the fight scenes in the Batman TV series.

 

Meanwhile the British Board of Film Regulation refused to certify ECW's Living Dangerously 2000 DVD (even with an 18 rating) until distributors removed footage of Rhino putting the Sandman's wife Lori through a table. Comically it appears the BBFC failed to notice the offending moment was repeated in a show-closing highlight package.

 

The content of pro wrestling became such a hot topic among British regulators that the BBFC even commissioned an in-depth study of viewer attitudes to both TV broadcasts and home video releases. That study is still available online (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/Audience%20Perception%20of%20TV%20Wrestlng_0.pdf) and is surely the only government agency document to feature the exchange:

 

“ARE THERE ANY WRESTLERS YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO BE?”

 

"Stephanie McMahon, she is rubbish.”

Edited by JNLister
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Driving me mental this. Can somebody post a link to the music theme Ric Flair was using at Superbrawl 1991 against Fujinami? It wasn't his usual theme. Cheers!

Edited by bAzTNM#1
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After the awesome debut of Bobby Roode, I got to think about if he went on to be something on the main roster and got himself a DVD set a few years down the line.

Now, working off the assumption that TNA is dead as a promotion and Vince isn't interested in the TNA library, with WWE having somewhat of a relationship with New Japan, would WWE be able to use the match that Beer Money were in at Wrestle Kingdom in a DVD set if they pay New Japan some sort of fee, or would they not be able to as Roode would have been a TNA talent?

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After the awesome debut of Bobby Roode, I got to think about if he went on to be something on the main roster and got himself a DVD set a few years down the line.

Now, working off the assumption that TNA is dead as a promotion and Vince isn't interested in the TNA library, with WWE having somewhat of a relationship with New Japan, would WWE be able to use the match that Beer Money were in at Wrestle Kingdom in a DVD set if they pay New Japan some sort of fee, or would they not be able to as Roode would have been a TNA talent?

Footage would come down to copyright, which I imagine NJPW own with it being their show. But then depends if the term 'Beer Money' was trademarked by TNA. I doubt it. Because TNA.

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WHat was the name of the female photographer around in the 90s. SHe was slim and had reddish/dark hair.

Watched an ECW match on network last night and spotted her.

She deffo did Superbawl 3 because 12 yr old me at the remembered having a thing for her.

Something like Jo Helen Hallmark maybe? Dunno why i have that name in my head but i do.

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