Message-ID: 

"Ebon Bear"  wrote:
| > Smackdown has also been taking third place in its time slot this
| > season, first beating ABC's weird Push, Nevada, then constantly
| > beating ABC's overrated series, Dinotopia.  Lately, its ratings have
| > been higher than Raw's.  Unfortunately, as long as Raw remains the
| > flagship show in its state, Smackdown is going to be looked at in the
| > same vein.  Smackdown could save major televised wrestling as we know
| > it.  But just like Raw, Smackdown needs to change a few things.
| 
| I'm told UPN are talking about cutting SD to 1 hour when the contracts up
| (anyone got some more info on this?) so it looks like TV wrestling is in bad
| shape anyhow.

If this does happen, I hope that they "move" the second hour of
Smackdown to Velocity's timeslot.  Then they could differentiate the
two shows.  Have the cruiserweights only wrestle on one of the two
"Smackdown" shows.  Have the workrate gods (Angle, Benoit, Eddie &
Chavo Guerrero, etc) only wrestle on one of the two "Smackdown"
shows.  Have the unwatchable hosses (Angle, Show, etc) only wrestle
on one of the two "Smackdown" shows.


| > 2.  No outside entities.  First, it's Sara Calloway--Undertaker's wife
| > and pregnant no less, then the Undertaker's girlfriend. 

She went from being his wife to his girlfriend? :-)


| > He has employed a lot of tactics and a
| > lot of savvy in his wrestling, and had what I believe is the match of
| > the year teaming up with Benoit, against Edge and Rey Misterio at No
| > Mercy.  
| 
| I would have picked the match those two teams had in the triple-threat
| involving Chavo & Ediie (and yes, I can't spell their surname)

Or even Eddie's first name! ;-D  And for those that care, it's
"Guerrero".


| > Oh yes, sometime this year, if Raw's ratings don't improve, it's time
| > to move Smackdown to Raw's slot.
| 
| Is that possible though? I have no idea what the contract stipulations with
| the respective channels are but would it really be that simple?

Both are Viacom networks, right?  But I don't have the answer as to
whether or not they'd be allowed to do this.  If UPN is seriously
thinking about cutting Smackdown to one hour--maybe they wouldn't
mind if it left altogether.

And actually, the reason I've heard for UPN "maybe" wanting to cut
Smackdown to one hour is so that they could use it as a lead-in show
which would be able to take advantage of the high ratings (relative
to other UPN shows) that Smackdown gets.  Since Smackdown is taped
(not live) anyway, I'd be surprised if they didn't keep it as two
hours, but show one hour on Thursday, and the other hour on either
Wednesday or Friday (so they could "double dip" and have two UPN
wrestling shows with high ratings, each providing a lead-in for
other UPN programming.


| There's four other problems as well. Firstly, never ever drop a storyline
| without explaining it. Remember the Steph / Bisch kiss? That's now been
| dropped with no explanation

IAWTP.


| Granted, wrestling isn't
| brain food but there are limits and the Torrie / Dawn Marie story was one of
| them. A woman pulling the father to get to the daughter? Sorry, that doesn't
| happen outside of Jerry Springer.

..which is booked by an acquaintance of mine.


| Second, Tripper has to go. No matter how much of a ratings pull he is, even
| the road agents are now saying he has far too much influence over the whole
| company.

Which road agents are saying that?  Arn?  Fit?  Who?

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