Jack-Hammer
YOU WILL RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!!!
This is gonna be kind of a long one. It's not a rant and I do promise that there's a point to it.
How many times have you read complaints in which someone labels wrestling, whether it be WWE or TNA or ROH or whomever, as "stale" or "too predictable"?
How many times have you read those same comments or complaints worded in a dozen different ways, no matter how valid your counter argument is?
In a lot of ways, I think internet fans are very spoiled due mostly to the impact of being something of an "insider" affords them due to the internet itself. There are frequent statements/complaints about how some fans want wrestling to return to the innovative days of the Attitude Era. What a lot of those fans don't realize, in my view, is that in and of itself is just another trap waiting to be sprung by disgruntled fans. If WWE brought back concepts that seemed innovative & controversial, like Vince's Kiss My Ass Club segments, how much more criticism would WWE garner in this day and age than they did in the much raunchier late 90s? Even then, WWE still got tons of criticism from parents who watched the show, from television watchdog groups, from politicians, from famous television personalities like Oprah, etc.
If WWE did such a concept today, there'd be a massive backlash against WWE. There are new directions that pro wrestling could potentially go down, directions that would involve wrestling companies putting on even raunchier & controversial segments on television than we saw during the Attitude Era. WWE or TNA could introduce elements of racisim & homophobia into their storylines, or even their characters, maybe even do something of a prostitution angle with the women that work for the company. Sounds innovative maybe? Certainly would get people talking but, in the end, how many people would be turned off? How much money would the companies lose by trying such controversially innovative ideas, such as having sponsors pulling their ads from commercials and potential fines from the FCC and so on.
The thing that got me thinking about "innovation" was something I heard/saw on Good Morning America this morning. I was working out in the gym and they were doing a story on Madonna and Lady Gaga. Recently, there've been a ton of critics that've called Gaga a "Madonna impersonator". The first time I saw Lady Gaga, that's honestly the first thing I thought. I thought of her as a Madonna wannabe as she's patterned her career so similarly to Madonna's. She does the whole fashion thing, wears these weird & often highly sexualized outfits, frequently does interviews or speaks at engagements in which she makes a highly controversial statement, introduces a LOT of sexual elements into her music videos, etc. Then, just take a look at her. Her overall look is similar to that. Anyway, the story then talked about how Gaga's hit "Born This Way" sounds virtually identical to Madonna's 90s hit "Express Yourself". Madonna herself said, in a brief interview segment that was shown, in which she all but called Gaga an impersonator. They also showed a clip of Madonna in concert in which she sings "Express Yourself" before, in the middle of the song, switches to singing "Born This Way", which has only furthered the speculation of Madonna feeling that Gaga is something of an impersonator. It doesn't mean that Gaga isn't a great artist, if you're into her, or that what she does & says isn't controversial or buzz worthy; it's just that it's all been done before by Madonna.
The story put me in mind of WWE and TNA. As a wrestling fan of pretty much my entire life, I've kinda sorta seen it all. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it anymore, of course, but there are VERY few surprises left that can be done, and most of what can still be done might very well not be worth watching. TNA sometimes gets called a poor man's WWE or WCW and that made me think about other shows on television. Pawn Stars is a huge hit for History just as Storage Wars is for A&E. Pawn Stars is a show that, while they've lost some viewers, still routinely draws around 5 million per new episode with new SW episodes this past season averaging around 4.3 million; both of which are huge numbers for cable shows. However, there have been completely similar shows with a near identical format to those shows both on History, A&E and other networks that don't draw nearly as much as those two.
On History, they have "Cajun" Pawn Stars. It's basically like Pawn Stars, just set in Louisiana. It's a different shop, different personalities, different locale, etc. New episodes of this show's first season drew well, but not nearly as well as the ORIGINAL Pawn Stars. CPS only tended to draw somewhere around 2.3 million. A show called Hardcore Pawn on TruTV often draws only about 1.5 million. A&E has a show caled Storage Wars: Texas and, just as with the pawn shows, only draws about half of what the original SW does. Now while WWE wasn't the first wrestling company on television, it's the only one that's left of those older companies that were. TNA is the "upstart" I guess you could say and it seems that no matter what they do or try, they're just not able to draw more than maybe a third or so of WWE Raw's audience. Pepsi was the upstart to Coke in the so called Cola Wars and Coke is still the #1 brand in terms of sales.
All in all, I guess that the point is that there just aren't very many places left for wrestling to go in terms of new and "innovative" ideas. We've seen everything that can be done and whatever's left would probably not be fit or even allowable on television. If Combat Zone Wrestling, CZW, secured a television deal, how long before it got labeled an "ECW rip off" or "ECW clone" if it's not called those things already?
How many times have you read complaints in which someone labels wrestling, whether it be WWE or TNA or ROH or whomever, as "stale" or "too predictable"?
How many times have you read those same comments or complaints worded in a dozen different ways, no matter how valid your counter argument is?
In a lot of ways, I think internet fans are very spoiled due mostly to the impact of being something of an "insider" affords them due to the internet itself. There are frequent statements/complaints about how some fans want wrestling to return to the innovative days of the Attitude Era. What a lot of those fans don't realize, in my view, is that in and of itself is just another trap waiting to be sprung by disgruntled fans. If WWE brought back concepts that seemed innovative & controversial, like Vince's Kiss My Ass Club segments, how much more criticism would WWE garner in this day and age than they did in the much raunchier late 90s? Even then, WWE still got tons of criticism from parents who watched the show, from television watchdog groups, from politicians, from famous television personalities like Oprah, etc.
If WWE did such a concept today, there'd be a massive backlash against WWE. There are new directions that pro wrestling could potentially go down, directions that would involve wrestling companies putting on even raunchier & controversial segments on television than we saw during the Attitude Era. WWE or TNA could introduce elements of racisim & homophobia into their storylines, or even their characters, maybe even do something of a prostitution angle with the women that work for the company. Sounds innovative maybe? Certainly would get people talking but, in the end, how many people would be turned off? How much money would the companies lose by trying such controversially innovative ideas, such as having sponsors pulling their ads from commercials and potential fines from the FCC and so on.
The thing that got me thinking about "innovation" was something I heard/saw on Good Morning America this morning. I was working out in the gym and they were doing a story on Madonna and Lady Gaga. Recently, there've been a ton of critics that've called Gaga a "Madonna impersonator". The first time I saw Lady Gaga, that's honestly the first thing I thought. I thought of her as a Madonna wannabe as she's patterned her career so similarly to Madonna's. She does the whole fashion thing, wears these weird & often highly sexualized outfits, frequently does interviews or speaks at engagements in which she makes a highly controversial statement, introduces a LOT of sexual elements into her music videos, etc. Then, just take a look at her. Her overall look is similar to that. Anyway, the story then talked about how Gaga's hit "Born This Way" sounds virtually identical to Madonna's 90s hit "Express Yourself". Madonna herself said, in a brief interview segment that was shown, in which she all but called Gaga an impersonator. They also showed a clip of Madonna in concert in which she sings "Express Yourself" before, in the middle of the song, switches to singing "Born This Way", which has only furthered the speculation of Madonna feeling that Gaga is something of an impersonator. It doesn't mean that Gaga isn't a great artist, if you're into her, or that what she does & says isn't controversial or buzz worthy; it's just that it's all been done before by Madonna.
The story put me in mind of WWE and TNA. As a wrestling fan of pretty much my entire life, I've kinda sorta seen it all. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy it anymore, of course, but there are VERY few surprises left that can be done, and most of what can still be done might very well not be worth watching. TNA sometimes gets called a poor man's WWE or WCW and that made me think about other shows on television. Pawn Stars is a huge hit for History just as Storage Wars is for A&E. Pawn Stars is a show that, while they've lost some viewers, still routinely draws around 5 million per new episode with new SW episodes this past season averaging around 4.3 million; both of which are huge numbers for cable shows. However, there have been completely similar shows with a near identical format to those shows both on History, A&E and other networks that don't draw nearly as much as those two.
On History, they have "Cajun" Pawn Stars. It's basically like Pawn Stars, just set in Louisiana. It's a different shop, different personalities, different locale, etc. New episodes of this show's first season drew well, but not nearly as well as the ORIGINAL Pawn Stars. CPS only tended to draw somewhere around 2.3 million. A show called Hardcore Pawn on TruTV often draws only about 1.5 million. A&E has a show caled Storage Wars: Texas and, just as with the pawn shows, only draws about half of what the original SW does. Now while WWE wasn't the first wrestling company on television, it's the only one that's left of those older companies that were. TNA is the "upstart" I guess you could say and it seems that no matter what they do or try, they're just not able to draw more than maybe a third or so of WWE Raw's audience. Pepsi was the upstart to Coke in the so called Cola Wars and Coke is still the #1 brand in terms of sales.
All in all, I guess that the point is that there just aren't very many places left for wrestling to go in terms of new and "innovative" ideas. We've seen everything that can be done and whatever's left would probably not be fit or even allowable on television. If Combat Zone Wrestling, CZW, secured a television deal, how long before it got labeled an "ECW rip off" or "ECW clone" if it's not called those things already?
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