Eric Bischoff, as the former President of WCW, has always been a sought after authority when it comes to matters of wrestling on television. Most recently, he was the executive director of the WWE Smackdown brand as they made the transition over to the Fox Network. Eric was recently asked about the modern landscape of professional wrestling on television with so many new products having great exposure on not only traditional TV channels but social media and streaming platforms as well.
Bischoff acknowledged the crowded landscape on After 83 Weeks and said the amount of wrestling programs currently out and available to watch has created a major problem for all promotions trying to create compelling content.
“One of the big challenges now is that there’s so much content out there. WWE’s got three hours on Monday night, SmackDown, two hours of broadcast on Friday night. AEW’s got two hours on Wednesday night. NXT’s got two hours on Wednesday nights. My God, there’s so much content available,” he began. “You know, there’s a finite number of wrestling fans. The pool of wrestling fans out there in the audience is only so big and they’re being drenched with content and great content, by the way, not bad content. Great content. And I think there’s a point where you’re giving it away. You’re producing so much content out there that it’s hard to create great content. And that’s the key is when you put on a show, whether it’s a pay-per-view, whether it’s Monday Night Raw, whether it’s SmackDown, whether it’s Dynamite, whatever it is, NXT, it’s got to be compelling content. And when you start just putting out more and more and more, that’s really hard to do. There’s a limit to how much really special great content that you can create [and] not overexpose your talent. And that’s another big issue.”
Eric would cite low ratings of WWE’s flagship show, Monday Night Raw, at the end of 2019 as an example.
He continued, “I think the last two or three weeks have been some of the lowest-rated episodes of Monday Night Raw in history. Then you start asking yourself, why is that? Is it the talent? Is it the writing team? Is it the presentation? Or perhaps it’s the fact that there’s so much content out there that none of it feels special anymore. Well, you can miss Monday and get some good stuff on a Wednesday. You can’t miss Wednesday and get some good stuff on Friday. You know, if I miss it all, I can get some good stuff on YouTube. It’s really challenging in today’s marketplace.”
Eric’s comments can be heard in full in the video above.
Transcription credit should go to Robert DeFelice of WrestleZone.
