Television can be a very useful tool for a professional wrestling promotion. Back in the day, it was one of the main vehicles that companies had to sell tickets to live events. As wrestling evolved, television shows became a tool to increase awareness and sell pay-per-views as well. With success comes ratings, and the inevitable addition of extra coverage, which leads us to the conundrum that we face today.
Browsing: wrestling
A little over ten years ago, I started attending wrestling shows on a fairly regular basis. At the time, I was living in a former mining village in England, and save for the odd show here and there, wrestling in that part of the world was was limited to local wrestlers who may or may not have been trained, and nothing more.
This month marks fifteen years since WWE bought out WCW. In the time since then, there’s been books written about the demise of WCW, how WWE has struggled to adapt without competition, and many words said about the general state of wrestling post-WCW. Whilst it’s obvious that the big dog isn’t as big as it once was, it’s not exactly fair to say that the entire pound isn’t as loud as it was in 2001.
Up until recently, being a fan of wrestling could be a very expensive and space-filling hobby. If you were interested in having copies of events to watch on-demand, then a home video library would be the order of the day, especially if you were a fan of multiple promotions. Whether they were obtained legally or otherwise, wrestling fans around the world would have had to keep piles of VHS tapes and later DVDs in order to keep up to speed on their favourite groups.
At the moment, WWE is getting a battering for its bland programming (at least, for shows not called NXT) – it’s not the first time that’s happened, nor will it be the last. However, as we approach the end of 2015, us wrestling fans have never had a better choice of alternatives. If that sounds a little stupid, let me explain.