Sphinx Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 It needs to come across as culturally relevant. If they're making references to pop culture, it often feels shoehorned in and it feels square. You don't want to do it too much, but people know when it seems authentic and when it seems phoney. The Rock is good at making those references and it makes wrestling feel cool again. They need young writers with experienced writers who are willing to try put their finger on the pulse. They, and TV in general, need a more racially diverse writing team. I said a while back how African-American acts are so poorly represented in WWE despite there being huge potential for a black star. New Day have got themselves over by being themselves rather than the shit the writers fed them. Allowing wrestlers to try be themselves in general is key to new stars. The top guys backstage are too old to spot potential there though - they don't understand what's current. And of course visually it needs a shake up. WWE is glitz, glamour and world class production. It shouldn't be looking virtually the same for 7 years (and still similar for years before that). Wrestlers should have to do hot-seating regularly. They sit down, a group asks them any question they want. The wrestler has to answer in character. It would help them understand who they are more and thus make them more authentic. There should be more consistent links between episodes. If a guy has been put into a six-man team and they win, he could be walking backstage and bump into another member of that team. All it needs is greetings and a handshake - 'hey man, s'up? How's your neck?' 'It's been worse' 'Take it easy, bro' - and the guy then moves onto whatever he was doing (an interview, bumping into heel/authority/whatever). Obviously when I say about the neck, the other team would have worked on the guy's neck the week before, but that can be subtle. This kind of thing helps build relationships without it needing 2-3 minutes and distracting from the story you're trying to tell. You can bring him back in the fold if he needs an ally. Wrestlers appearing outside of the arena. Doing things in the real world - just obviously not mundane things. Larger than life characters in real settings has appeal. It opens opportunities for how feuds can form and is a nice visual contrast to constant backstage areas. Attitude and Smackdown got me into wrestling. They were hot shit in school. They're a great advert for TV - by playing the games, you already know the characters and their moves. A hot game would be a great way of getting new fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_mole Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Is there any women on the writing staff besides Stephanie? With all due respect to Stephanie she has been a multimillionaire daughter all her life and has hardly lived in the real world, wrestling as a whole needs to learn how to write for women. I think they need to change the set up a lot besides changes here and there it's basically looked the same for nearly 20 years, I don't know what they could do but when Raw changed to the big screen and ramp it felt a lot more big time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Duke Posted October 23, 2015 Paid Members Share Posted October 23, 2015 I’ve been thinking a fair bit about this whole “copy the style of Breaking Bad etc” thing and I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what that’s even supposed to mean. I mean, apart from “just write better”, I can’t work out what it’s supposed to look like. I mean, if Game of Thrones was 3 hours and every single week, it’d probably be pretty boring most of the time too. I guess having deeper characters is part of it, but that relies on good acting and good understanding of the characters, which the writers don’t seem to have. The former speaks for itself as to why it’s a problem for a significant number of guys, and the latter is the peculiarity of how they write. They don’t decide on characters and cast people, they have guys who come up with a character (or more likely are given one by Vince) and then have to write around it, which is significantly harder. It’s also, largely, that the storylines are driven to matches, rather than for development of characters. Look at Bray Wyatt. He has, potentially, a really interesting character, but as we’ve talked about many times here, it’s meaningless because he never accomplishes anything. This is partly because he’s been brought into feuds to put people over, but it’s also partly because WWE doesn’t want to have anyone affected by feuds with him long term, because feuds aren’t about character development, they’re about the match at the end. (While I don’t know for sure, I assume the writers are told “hey, these guys are having a match at the next event, get them there” and no more, making serious character development really hard. I’m not sure copying the superhero trend is a wise idea (any more than they already are) either. The whole larger than life heroes and villains thing is a big part of wrestling anyway, and culture is reaching saturation point with super hero films, if it isn’t already One of the things that makes Raw as difficult as it is to watch at the moment, and as hard for the character work to mean anything, is the lack of any real structure, and anything overarching linking it all together. It’s all just stuff that happens. It’s not really nailed to anything, and so over three hours, with nothing building on anything else, it’s just like watching 3 hours of disjointed youtube clips, and presumably makes real character development harder. TV always has a grander motivation for people. Walter White needs money, House needs to solve a puzzle, Batman is a Bat man. Wrestling doesn’t have that anymore The “wrestling isn’t wrestling” video talked about how wrestling is a show about a wrestling show, which is becoming less and less true. If it *was* like that it’d probably be easier to follow. I’m not suggesting “oh just make it all UFC” because that’s so two thousand and late, but taking a similar structure and applying to the show would be better. If you had people ranked(even just invisibly), with matches effecting the rank and the number one contender being an actual number one contender you make the inevitable loads of matches mean a bit more. If the matches mean more, then costing people matches, for example, means more, cheating means more and feuds mean more (and pay per views mean more!). It also provides people with that grander motivation, doesn’t it? Everyone’s trying to reach the belt, climb to the top, but they have to deal with this guy along the way. To counterpoint bray wyatt from earlier, look at Kevin Owens. His character was far easier to grasp because he is all about making as much money as possible for his kids and he doesn’t care who he steps on to do it. You can supplement loads of the matches with documentary type things, skits, hype packages, actual interviews (rather than the garbage they put out now) to get characters across and again, everything means more. This then allows you to build some wacky storylines around that, rather than have them be the central plot point in a disjointed mess. Make Raw about a wrestling federation filled with larger than life characters, rather than a sketch show, and it’ll be much easier to do something with. Right now it’s collapsing under it’s own pointless weight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pinc Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 I’ve been thinking a fair bit about this whole “copy the style of Breaking Bad etc” thing and I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what that’s even supposed to mean. I mean, apart from “just write better”, I can’t work out what it’s supposed to look like. I can't speak for anyone else, but what I mean by it is start writing proper character driven story arcs which get us from the beginning of one 'season' to the next, and update the aesthetic of the shows to match what's going on elsewhere in popular culture i.e. make it smarter, and give it a bit of an edge. The closest they ever came to that was the Summer of Punk. For about a month Punk and Vince behaved like complex adults with believable motivations and grievances - and it was thrilling! I watch that contract signing segment back more than anything from the Attitude era, and the shades of grey are incredible for a WWE show. Through a fluke of circumstance a perennial outsider underdog suddenly has the millionaire demagogue by the balls. It's like the storyline to an actual movie that grown ups might want to watch, and it always reminds me of Jack's smirking revenge in Fight Club where Ed Norton's boss realises what a monster he's become (and that he can't do anything about it). Punk showing up on grainy Youtube footage at ComicCon giving Triple H shit IRL and posing for pictures with the World title he'd just stolen on the streets of Chicago seemed smart and edgy in a way WWE has never been. I don't know why they didn't do more of that stuff. It didn't translate into monster ratings and buyrates overnight but there were early signs that Punk was crossing over in a way that no one else had for ages. I seem to remember his entrance music going to the top of the iTunes charts around that time, and he shot that skit on Jimmy Kimmel which would never have happened just one month earlier. The early signs were there that there was a fanbase willing to get their teeth into a proper story arc which still nonetheless featured wrestlers having wrestling matches. If they could sustain story arcs like that over a year or more they'd be much, much more in tune with the (admittedly vague and ill-defined) BreakingBad-geist that I'm on about. I've always felt that Hulkamania was booked for children and the Attitude era for adolescents. I would hate for wrestling to ever lose its appeal to those demographics, but they're overdue an attempt at a more adult product by about 10 years now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DraxSpago Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 It might be simplifying things a bit but I'd be happy if they just made me want to pay to see two wrestlers have a match I haven't seen a million times before Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great Bear Promotions Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 If they could sustain story arcs like that over a year or more they'd be much, much more in tune with the (admittedly vague and ill-defined) BreakingBad-geist that I'm on about. I've always felt that Hulkamania was booked for children and the Attitude era for adolescents. I would hate for wrestling to ever lose its appeal to those demographics, but they're overdue an attempt at a more adult product by about 10 years now. It really isn't. People that aren't into wrestling aren't going to come flooding back because somebodies written an intricate storyline that Darren Young is starting to have doubts about tagging with Titus O'Neil for some reason. It's still lads fighting in their pants. Wrestling can't escape from that. Intricate storylines wouldn't bring anyone in, but I would imagine would have people tuning out as they simply can't be bothered to follow them, especially with a three hour show. RAW is kind of indicative of the WWE's split personality for me, with the chasing of TMZ/ESPN it's really trying to appeal to a broad demographic as possible, but at the end of the day is appealing to no one. For me RAW is a an anachronism in TV terms. It really shouldn't exist in its current format and that's half the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pinc Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 If they could sustain story arcs like that over a year or more they'd be much, much more in tune with the (admittedly vague and ill-defined) BreakingBad-geist that I'm on about. I've always felt that Hulkamania was booked for children and the Attitude era for adolescents. I would hate for wrestling to ever lose its appeal to those demographics, but they're overdue an attempt at a more adult product by about 10 years now. It really isn't. People that aren't into wrestling aren't going to come flooding back because somebodies written an intricate storyline that Darren Young is starting to have doubts about tagging with Titus O'Neil for some reason. It's still lads fighting in their pants. Wrestling can't escape from that. Intricate storylines wouldn't bring anyone in, but I would imagine would have people tuning out as they simply can't be bothered to follow them, especially with a three hour show. Raging Bull is lads fighting in their pants. Fight Club is lads fighting in their pants. Southpaw is lads fighting in their pants. You can do loads with lads fighting in their pants. I'm not necessarily saying that it needs to be all that intricate either. Just have the wrestlers act like adults rather than children, and update the aesthetic of the show to be more contemporary. On the rare occasions they do that you do see little spikes in interest - Punk became a merch machine after Summer 2011. The first One Night Stand PPV (which I'd say is the second best example of a more believable product they've pushed) drew really well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great Bear Promotions Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 Raging Bull is lads fighting in their pants. Fight Club is lads fighting in their pants. Southpaw is lads fighting in their pants. You can do loads with lads fighting in their pants. I'm not necessarily saying that it needs to be all that intricate either. Just have the wrestlers act like adults rather than children, and update the aesthetic of the show to be more contemporary. On the rare occasions they do that you do see little spikes in interest - Punk became a merch machine after Summer 2011. The first One Night Stand PPV (which I'd say is the second best example of a more believable product they've pushed) drew really well. But none of those three films have the stigma of being 'Wrestling innit?' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted October 23, 2015 Moderators Share Posted October 23, 2015 Pro wrestling as a concept has a much broader acceptance in the USA than here though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator Onyx2 Posted October 23, 2015 Awards Moderator Share Posted October 23, 2015 It’s not really nailed to anything, and so over three hours, with nothing building on anything else, it’s just like watching 3 hours of disjointed youtube clips The estimable David Bixenspan has been correlating the Monday night viewers with WWE's YouTube channel views. WWE is the most viewed content creator on YouTube and those numbers keep going up as Raw ratings go down. Something to think about. Key segments are doing at least 450K views now. Main events over 1m. Top 10 Raw Moments 1.8m+. So maybe they don't care about the Monday night decline, and they keep the USA Network money for that. Meanwhile, they cream off advertising revenue from YouTube to supplement it. 1.8m views for a segment is not bad in YouTube money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLowdown1987 Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 It might be simplifying things a bit but I'd be happy if they just made me want to pay to see two wrestlers have a match I haven't seen a million times before The problem with that is that the way the business has gone since around 97/98 means you get big name vs big name every week. The quest for ratings has meant that diluting the product with the same matches on TV and the same skits and routines. It's gotten boring but I can't see it changing. The minute they said they would put PPV's on the network meant the old school way of TV building to PPV was over. It's as if they said to themselves 'This is our chance to finally get away from the 'sports' side of WWE and become that full on TV soap opera extravaganza we've always dreamed of'. They could finally get away from that UFC/Boxing/Pro Wrestling belief people would always talk about when it came to Sporting PPV. They never wanted to be associated with any kind of sports and the network put a nail in that one. Theres nothing to build to anymore. Just a constant barrage of the same old shit, week in, week out. It's live cabaret. They have a platform to build so many exciting events and matches but ultimately the carnyness about them will always seep through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted October 23, 2015 Awards Moderator Share Posted October 23, 2015 It’s not really nailed to anything, and so over three hours, with nothing building on anything else, it’s just like watching 3 hours of disjointed youtube clips The estimable David Bixenspan has been correlating the Monday night viewers with WWE's YouTube channel views. WWE is the most viewed content creator on YouTube and those numbers keep going up as Raw ratings go down. Something to think about. Key segments are doing at least 450K views now. Main events over 1m. Top 10 Raw Moments 1.8m+. So maybe they don't care about the Monday night decline, and they keep the USA Network money for that. Meanwhile, they cream off advertising revenue from YouTube to supplement it. 1.8m views for a segment is not bad in YouTube money. Using that sort of information, maybe there's something in them following something of the model that all the late night talk shows in America do at the moment, and construct the shows around segments that, when uploaded onto YouTube, become really shareable and end up reaching a much larger audience than they would on TV. Think Doc Brown and Marty McFly turning up on Kimmel the other night, or Jimmy Fallon reuniting the Saved By The Bell cast, or James Corden doing all of Tom Hanks' films in six minutes. Start using more of your three-hour runtime doing that - rather than creating web-exclusive content, perhaps - and see what catches on, and keep building to it. You maybe get shorter, sharper character based segments on your main show, you still have matches but again they're a bit shorter and snappier (move-based guys like Rollins already kind of tailor to that kind of action-packed thing) and while the longer stuff might still be there for people watching on TV, if you consume and share online you're just as valuable a viewer. Then, if you plonk a PPV/Network Special ad at the end of each video, you might get a few more subscribers out of it from those who want to see what happens next. I don't know if it's a sustainable model financially but it's certainly zeitgeisty. New Day segments are near enough there already, with a bit of a push. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Kaz Hayashi Posted October 23, 2015 Paid Members Share Posted October 23, 2015 Raging Bull is lads fighting in their pants. Fight Club is lads fighting in their pants. Southpaw is lads fighting in their pants. You can do loads with lads fighting in their pants. I'm not necessarily saying that it needs to be all that intricate either. Just have the wrestlers act like adults rather than children, and update the aesthetic of the show to be more contemporary. On the rare occasions they do that you do see little spikes in interest - Punk became a merch machine after Summer 2011. The first One Night Stand PPV (which I'd say is the second best example of a more believable product they've pushed) drew really well. But none of those three films have the stigma of being 'Wrestling innit?' There was a box office hit called the wrestler a few years ago. That managed quite well considering it was 'wrestling wasn'it'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DraxSpago Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 It might be simplifying things a bit but I'd be happy if they just made me want to pay to see two wrestlers have a match I haven't seen a million times before The problem with that is that the way the business has gone since around 97/98 means you get big name vs big name every week. The quest for ratings has meant that diluting the product with the same matches on TV and the same skits and routines. It's gotten boring but I can't see it changing. The matches don't necessarily have to be brand new matchups though, Rock and Austin had dozens of matches including a fair few on PPV before WM17 yet that was a massive draw on the strength of two massive names having a match to see who the best was, plus they hadn't had a one on one match in about 2 years, same can be said for Cena and Lesnar at Summerslam '14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLowdown1987 Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 It might be simplifying things a bit but I'd be happy if they just made me want to pay to see two wrestlers have a match I haven't seen a million times before The problem with that is that the way the business has gone since around 97/98 means you get big name vs big name every week. The quest for ratings has meant that diluting the product with the same matches on TV and the same skits and routines. It's gotten boring but I can't see it changing. The matches don't necessarily have to be brand new matchups though, Rock and Austin had dozens of matches including a fair few on PPV before WM17 yet that was a massive draw on the strength of two massive names having a match to see who the best was, plus they hadn't had a one on one match in about 2 years, same can be said for Cena and Lesnar at Summerslam '14 Yeah, but these days unless your part-time your going to be wrestling every week against the same guy you will be in the PPV in some way or another. If they cared about building towards interesting match ups for the belt they would take bits from UFC and Boxing and intertwine the realism of those real sports with the drama and excitement of Pro Wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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