Got To Tell You Something 57: It’s us or them
Submitted by Big Brother on Friday, November 24, 2006 at 2:48 AM EST





I Got To Tell You Something 57: It’s us or them

Hello one and all and welcome to this very special edition of “I got to tell you something”. I’m your Big Brother, as usual, and I sure hope you guys had a better week and a half than I did. I got surgery and I’ve been on medications for the past week or so. Yeah… I wasn’t totally present mentally (and still am not completely). But I am PUMPED!!! Why? Let me explain.

About two years ago I created a tournament of column writing called ECW: Extreme Column Writing. It was designed both to help columnists make a name for themselves and to show how creativity can go a long way in improving a column. Well, last week we started the 3rd edition of this tournament and the Columns Forums are right now full of brilliant columns that deserve our attention. If you’re a fan of writers who go “outside the box” you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Also, I continue my weekly “news show” in the CF called BaD news. Let’s say that for the past two weeks, with the presence of ECW, it went pretty much unnoticed but next Sunday we’ll have our Survivor Series predictions and, with any luck, the presence of the one and only Davey Boy (if he got time). Our predictions are different in the sense that instead of doing the usual “who will win” predictions we try to predict the ratings DaveyBoy (the closest thing we have to an official rating) will give those matches.

And to finish on my column writing, me and my usual partner in crime Degenerate are preparing a year end show award of sort. We did one last summer and had so much fun we’re doing it again. This should be posted somewhere in December.

But back to Extreme Column Writing for a second. The concept of the tournament is as follow. The writers are given a subject and must write about it. Two writers (or three in special occasions) will have the same subject which, of course, means that the writers will have to distinguish each other by using creativity. After both columns are posted, the readers vote on which column was the best one and we then move on to the next round.

And this time, we have a heavy lineup of writers. From Xan to Degenerate, Eldandy to Zuma, Benbeeach to Jules, me, J-Man, Al Boo Boo and even your Ayatollah. Hell, we even discovered great writers where we didn’t expect them with X-factor and aisce. I’ll have the full matches and a link to the columns in the “You should read more” section. You should go read them.

Trust me, they are totally worth it.

Anyway, I guess it’s time to write my column but first…


Random rant from your bigger brother

This new section will replace (at least temporarily) the “Questions I shouldn’t think about” and will be a rant about wrestling these days. It could range from TNA, Raw, ECW or SD!. It will NOT be a full review of the last week since I already do that in great length with BaD news (which, with a little bit of luck, I may post on the Main Page one day).

Right now my biggest problems with wrestling are the Survivor Series team. There are two things that tick me off here. First off all, some of them teams really look like they were thrown together without any good reason. How and Why did DX decide to team up with CM Punk? Based on his boring performances in ECW? I could, to a certain extent, understand team extreme but even at that, they could easily have a backstage segment where they decide to team up. Would make more sense than what we have.

Same thing goes for the Cena team. When did Kane become great buddy with Cena? Let me rephrase that. When did Kane become buddy with anyone? Of course, I know that it is all meant to have Kane and Umaga on opposing teams, but it look like sloppy writing when you don’t even give a reason for these guys to team up. The Spirit Squad/Old timers match is the one that makes the most sense. The five cheerleaders are an obvious choice for a team and they have been feuding with Flair and his friends for a while now. But why wouldn’t the WWE just do a 2 minutes backstage segment where the Spirit Squad challenge Flair to build a team and another 2 minutes segment where Flair take all these old timers in a room and hype the match?

So basically, the rant of the week is as follow: the two things that piss me off about WWE right now is that they didn’t take the time to write the storylines to explain their matches and the teams make little to no sense depending of the situation.

Your brother tells you: You should read more!

Well this time, I got a lot of great columns for you… I got you ECW! The Extreme Column tournament that is. Here are the various matches and the columns. I’ll try to edit them as soon as they are posted.

Big Brother vs. aisce


Jules vs. Leviathan

Xanman vs Bobino

Eldandy vs. Degenerate

Diplomat vs. RIPbossman

Benbeeach vs. YourAyatollah

Zuma vs. Cicero

J-Man vs. Y2Xavier



Before I go into the Main portion of my column, I guess it would be a good idea to explain the subject. So here it is:

Big Brother vs. Aisce
Their subject: Should the WWE gear their shows to try to get new fans or to try to keep their long time fans happy?

Us against Them
It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive. ~Nicholas Johnson

Every business has to make decision for its survival. Do they release a new product? Should they invest in that new technology? Is it better to make it of steel or of plastic? Everyday brings its own new decision. But what is usually regarded as the most important question in today’s society is: Who are we going to market this product to? Who do we want to buy our product?

The wrestling business sure isn’t different from all that. Of course they have their own daily decisions. Do we push this wrestler? Should we play that angle? What will be the Main Event match? And of course, the most important decision to make for its survival is this: Who do we market it for?

Of course, if you ask any of the WWE marketing monkeys, they’ll answer you with an easy “We target the male 15-45 demographic”. Wow. Talk about a large target. Can’t believe they actually can miss it. Of course wrestling is targeting males. And 15-45? Why not just say “any testosterone filled male” while we’re at it? Of course, while that statement is true, there is a much trickier question to answer: Should the WWE target its shows (advertisements, storylines, angles, wrestlers…) towards the fans of the show in an effort to keep them hooked or should they try to break new grounds and grab new viewers?

The answer to this question is both simple and, as the question, tricky. Of course, wrestling needs new fans. The WWE can’t forget about fans, new or not, who didn’t catch the last few episodes of Smackdown or Raw. That’s why recaps were invented (that and the male 18-45 demographic has a 15 seconds memory thus we need replays). But on the other hand, can the WWE (or TNA for that matter) alienate their fans to get new ones? To answer this, I’d like to take a look at fans themselves.


If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. ~Author Unknown


As much as I’ve said in the past that wrestling is like any other TV show (scripted to make a predetermined impact) the fans are closer to sports fans. Sports fans are loyal to their teams and to their sport. They will buy tickets, T-Shirts, caps, mugs and so on. Of course, if they are home, they’ll watch the games. I don’t know how it is for other countries but I can tell you that a Montreal hockey fan will need a damn good reason not to watch the Saturday night game. I guess it could be the same thing for a Green Bay Packers fan on a Sunday (or the occasional Monday night). You get the point.

Of course, this statement has flaws. First off all, there is no way to talk about fans and see them as equals. I’ve always seen sports fans as four different groups. There are hardcore fans that will actually change their life in order to get their fix. They’ll take off on game day; they’ll refuse to go out if it could make them miss the game. Those guys who will remain fans whatever happen. They may not be positive about the team all the time. But even when they’ll voice their discontent, they’ll keep watching. Those fans are so loyal that there is virtually no way to completely lose them.

Then there is the normal fan. I don’t mean that as an opposite to any other fan. In the sport world, these fans are usually the ones that will watch if there is no good reason not to. They wouldn’t refuse to go out and wouldn’t refuse to work just to watch a game, but they’ll watch if they can, go to sports bar, buy occasional tickets and merchandise. Usually (from my own experience) these are the type of fans that will remain loyal as long as the team is worth it to them. For instance in Montreal, as long as the team shows heart and plays well, they’ll keep watching. They don’t necessarily mind the result as much as they mind the enjoyment they get from watching their favorite team. If the team does something to lose them, they’ll find something better. These fans are usually loyal, to a certain extent.

Then we have fans that will watch only when it’s cool. You know what I’m talking about. It’s there in every facet of our world. Some people will do things just because it’s cool. The best proof is that there were actually Britney Spears fans for other reasons than sexual stimulation. Usually it’s cool to be a sport fan when the team is winning and everybody is talking about it. When it’ll stop being cool, they’ll stop watching. In wrestling, this part of the fan base is hard to keep because their presence is largely dependant on the current trends in society. In the “uncool” periods, these fans are basically “non-fans”.

And then there is the occasional watcher. I’m talking about the fans that watch a couple of games a year without really following the team. They wouldn’t buy tickets. They would probably accept free tickets and they are usually easy to spot in a crowd: they are the last one to get on their feet for a goal/touchdown/homerun. They’ll zap on TV from one channel to another and will keep watching if there is a good game going on but wouldn’t miss another show to watch a game. Of course, these fans may act closer to “cool fans” when there is an important event (playoffs, MNF, rivalry games…). Those are non-fans since they will mostly never follow the team or spend any money on it.

As for wrestling fans, they pretty much follow the same mold. The hardcore fans… it’s me. Let’s face it, if I wasn’t a hardcore fan, I wouldn’t be here writing and reading columns, news, others read spoilers (for those of you who like to kill the surprise part of wrestling) buying tickets to the shows and so on. I know I hardly miss a Raw episode and I’ll watch Smackdown and ECW any time I can (although, I can’t afford to not work just to watch an episode of SD!). Most of LOP regular are either hardcore fans but we may also have normal fans reading. Those of you who read columns and news every once in a while. By the way, thanks for reading. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for your reading pleasure… and to piss off Degenerate and Zuma. Long story…

Anyway, back to the fans, in the Monday Night War there were a lot of cool fans and casual viewers who watched either because it was cool or because the buzz was big enough to make them stick on the show longer when they were zapping. Since then, it all faded out and both those groups are back to being mostly non-fans. How could Vince try to lure some of them back as being fans and, maybe, become loyal fans?


I could have been a doctor, but there were too many good shows on TV. ~Jason Love


Vince and the rest of World Wrestling Entertainment were always interested in getting more exposure in the “outside world”. It all started with Wrestlemania 1 with many celebrities like Cindy Lauper and Muhammad Ali being invited and continued over the years with others like Pete Rose, Drew Carey or Mike Tyson. In all those instances, the celebrities were brought in only to attract the mainstream media attention. Just like the recent K-Fed involvement, they didn’t change their whole shows or products in order to accommodate the fans. They simply used the name value of said television or sports personalities in order to boost their coverage. It is actually pretty rare to see any celebrity wrestling himself or have a whole storyline completely created for them. Of course there is always those Lawrence Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow situations but this is not the norm.

But celebrities are only one of the many ways the WWE tried to get attention. Who could forget the Mohammed Hassan storyline? In the wake of 9-11, an Arab character was brought on-screen to play the “Americans hate Arabs” angle. Of course, that got some media attention… even more when Hassan used masked allies (the WWE can say they weren’t terrorist all they want, that’s not what the public saw) attacked the Undertaker in a show that aired the same day London was attacked by terrorists bombing. Again, the show was taped two days ago so the WWE wasn’t trying to get heat from that particular bombing but it didn’t matter in the end.

If you look back in 2002, there was a tag team, two times champions, that was basically a publicity stunt: Billy and Chuck. For those of you who weren’t watching wrestling at that time, Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo started teaming with a very different style of character than we are used to see from them. The WWE started to slowly build the idea that they were homosexuals which culminated in a well advertised Gay Marriage on Smackdown. Many medias were present along with members of the gay community applauding WWE openness to such a touchy subject. Wanna guess how it turned out? They didn’t marry because it was a “publicity stunt” (that was the storyline) which, of course, angered many in the community. False advertisement, when discovered, is never a good thing.

But those aren’t the only way to get the attention of new viewers. Characters done specifically to target a niche audience has been a staple of the WWE for years already. From Undertaker for the gothic fans to John Cena for Hip Hop fans without forgetting the worm eating Boogeyman for… fishermen? Ok. Bad example. The point is: the WWE has many times tried to target a specific portion of the population with specific characters with mixed results.

Finally, the WWE also tries to get special attention by putting together special shows like USA Saturday Night Main Event. But in those special occasion, the WWE needs to take into consideration that IF they get a lot of new viewers that aren’t used to watching the show, they’ll also need to make sure they won’t “lose them” by being too storyline heavy or needing too much knowledge of past events to follow. The usual feeling is that the show end up being too light and uninteresting thus not making any impact.

All of those examples show how the WWE tried to get newer viewers by targeting the non fans. When the storylines are done to get the media attention, the characters are created and/or pushed to target a niche audience or make the show “dumb down” to accommodate occasional viewers the WWE is taking the risk of alienating longtime fans in order to get new ones. It’s one thing to do marketing outside to expose their product, but would it be better to concentrate only on actual fans?


Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it. ~Will Rogers


For a sports team, there is one sure way to ensure long time survival. They need to put together a good team to make the normal and hardcore fans happy which will create some media attention. Then they need to win on a consistent enough basis to create some real buzz, become cool again and if possible win the big games to keep all their fans happy and coming back for more. Simple isn’t it?

The thing is, even if wrestling fans act mostly like sports fans, the WWE has no way to act like a normal sports franchise. They can’t put more money in their roster to win against their competition in order to make them cool again. Their competition is not another team, it’s another product completely. So they have to work on their product itself. They have to make sure the hardcore fans stay happy enough to create at least some buzz. They have to keep a good enough show to make sure their “normal fans” (God I hate that term but I can’t come up with anything better) are watching. And ideally, they have to find a way to make “cool fans” and non-fans watch the show again.

But how can they make wrestling sounds cool again? What could actually make people usually not interested in wrestling watch it all of a sudden? Could it be more special events like SNME on USA? Why would a non-wrestling fan stay home on a Saturday night to watch wrestling? Isn’t there usually at least one sport game AND one good movie each and every Saturday night? If you take a look at the ratings for those events, you’ll see that there is even less viewers than for Raw or Smackdown. Not even the loyal fans care about it enough to watch, why would non fans be interested?

Could the presence of music or movies celebrities be the answer? Meh… they’ll get some media attention, they can spark the interest but I don’t think a K-Fed fan would have watched the whole Raw episodes K-Fed appeared on. So unless they have a really good reason, those fans will change the channel if their favorite celeb isn’t on the air.

What could make wrestling popular again? What happened the last time wrestling was hugely popular? At the beginning of the Monday Night War, Hulk Hogan made a huge impact on wrestling fans by turning heel. Then WCW came up with a completely new concept called nWo. He said himself that the whole idea was to have those superstars make it look like they were invading the show so that if the fans of that “other show” tuned in on Nitro, they would say “Hey, I loved those guys on Raw, let’s see what they do here.” It was answered by the WWE with DX doing crazy antics to grab those viewers from WCW and bring them back to WWE. Then Steve Austin came along and helped even more in a feud against the most evil character in WWE history: The Boss. Add to that superstars leaving left and right and trying to give more crazy matches than the rival company.

Of course, what happened during those crazy years was that the WWE had competition but that fact alone doesn’t explain why the ratings went up so high. It doesn’t explain why it became cool. It doesn’t explain what made those non-fans take notice.

I’ll tell you. Because the normal and hardcore fans were really enjoying their time and it made people notice. It became a subject of conversation so others tuned in to see what the buzz was all about. It wasn’t really the marketing campaign that made more fans love wrestling. There is no better marketing than no marketing at all. If your product can get good publicity by word of mouth it will have more power in the ears of potential costumers than if it’s by a salesman right?

Add to that the fact that since there will always be newer wrestling fans; just keeping your actual fanbase is enough to improve it in the long term. Why would the wrestling fanbase automatically increase? The same way you became hockey/baseball/football/or-any-other-favorite-sport fans. Because someone made them watch. Because at one point in teenage years male have a tendency to hear about wrestling and try it for themselves. Again, word of mouth. And the more loyal fans there are, the more teenagers will watch and learn to love wrestling.

So ask me again: which type of fans should the WWE try to please to increase their viewership?

To me, asking the question is answering it.







Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this week edition. I also hope that my medications didn’t make that column look like a complete clusterfuck. It looked good to me but, then again, I’ve been wrong in the past.

If you want to leave feedback, I’d love to hear it. You can send me an email here or you if you are a member of LOP you can simply got to my feedback thread. Thanks for reading and see ya next time…

Oh and don’t forget to look up the ECW tournament…









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