Taped Vs. Live

[Wacokid27]

I was listening to a couple of episodes back of the SCSA "Unleashed" podcast, one of the ones where he had Eric Bischoff on. One of the things they talked about the problems with having live Nitro on Monday and live Thunder on Thursday during the "last days of WCW".

Apparently, it's more expensive to air a live show than a recorded one (this was mentioned off-hand and no discussion of actual money was had), but the big thing they talked about was the wear-and-tear on the performers of doing a live show on Monday, two days to travel, then a live show on Thursday, one day to travel, a show on Saturday, a show on Sunday, another live show on Monday, etc. Bischoff talked about how quickly guys would get burned out and how little time they were able to spend with their families, decompressing, etc.

Having been an advocate of live Smackdown broadcasts, this discussion gave me some pause. I was thinking about the entertainment value to me, but I wasn't thinking about the morale effect on the performers, writers, backstage people, etc. I know this would be shows 4 days in a row most weeks (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, where now it's shows on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) for WWE, not 3 days on (Saturday, Sunday, Monday), 2 days off, 1 day on, 1 day off most weeks, but it still made me wonder about the impact of having a live Smackdown broadcast.

I don't know. Just a thought. What do you guys think?

wk

 

[ShaRpY HaRdY]

I can see where they are coming from with the wear and tear portion of it all as well as it being a bit more expensive however I feel like the money thing would take care of itself, personally a lot of my IRL friends stopped watching wrestling simply because they hated the fact that a good amount of it had been taped.

There's a larger anticipation factor for a live show, I mean people just read the spoilers for Tuesday and if it's looks bad on paper they aren't going to watch it during original airing however if it was live that would encourage people to watch during first run.

Now this isn't mentioned but I just want to discuss Hulu real quick, doing a 90 minute version of RAW uncut for Hulu is smart simply because there's like two matches that are cut out each week and some of those turn out to be some great matches during later watches, because of the match cuts this encourages people to watch the full episode live (this format can benefit SD too).

Switching SD to live and making it on Friday would leave Main Event by itself on Tuesday but I feel if they merged that show with Live Events on Sunday it could work out too (granted they JUST made it live on Tuesdays so this probably won't happen haha, mainly just wishful thinking).

 

[Wacokid27]

I honestly didn't even think about Main Event airing live on Tuesdays. That's five days of live performance per week for the majority of the talent, staff, etc.

Unless, you moved it to a live showing on Saturday or Sunday, where you could do it an hour before PPV's on PPV Sundays (like they used to do with Heat). Of course, then it would replace the PPV Pre-Shows (for good or ill).

wk

 

[ShaRpY HaRdY]

Well okay so SD tapings are on Tuesdays following the live Main Event I don't see why they couldn't do Main Event live on Fridays before SmackDown (Main Event portion only airs on Network). That way they wouldn't have to hire separate camera crews for Tuesday and Friday.. Then they could even it out by putting the tapings of NXT back to Wednesdays that way they don't have the TNA competition eating up some of their views.

 

[Leo C]

Well, if you have SD go live on Tuesday, nothing changes. It will be more expensive, sure, but there's no extra wear and tear on the talent just because it's live if you don't change the schedule. I guess if they wanted to make SD live in order to please NBC or whatever they could just tape Main Event and show it on the Network some other day while having SD go on Tuesday.

 

[Dolph'sZiggler]

Smackdown going live doesn't fix the awful product. It could be fine on tape delay if try actually put effort into it.

 

[Snowman1]

Largely what Ziggler just said, but I honestly don't see what the big deal is with live TV. Raw is live every week and it doesn't have that "anything can happen" atmosphere or the 'I need to watch this right NOW!" feeling imo, as it really does feel like the same show whether you catch it on WatchWrestling or on Raw, except one gives you the added bonus of not listening to those damn kids during AT&T ads.

It gets rid of the spoilers which is definitely a positive, but Main Event doesn't have spoilers anymore and nobody cares about it. And while the canned heat gets annoying, it's really none of our business who gets the best crowd pops anyway.

Waco, you said in another thread how to fix Smackdown. Either put 2 Smackdown-exclusive storylines on it or bring back the brand split and put a bunch of great wrestling talent on it.

 

[Nero_x3]

Smackdown has never been live unless it's a special episode. As we've all seen before, Smackdown doesn't need to be live in order to be a good product. Regardless of the spoilers coming from the whole tape delay aspect, the true actual way to fix it is proper booking and actual storylines rather than pointless matches, which is what we've exhibited for a long time on Smackdown. Smackdown does feel like a subpar Raw IMO, whereas it used to be its own show, and although many blame the brand split, I don't think that having specific superstars on either show matters at this point. What hits hardest in my mind is having a show that actually compels the viewer to find out more about a storyline rather than just watching a match or cheap backstage segment that intends to further a storyline while miserably failing.

Now, leaving the whole storyline aspect out of the situation (albeit it is necessary), there's the whole argument of when it should air live, as competition is another thing to consider. I myself don't know which shows air on which nights, excluding Monday, but I know that there are other sports and shows out there, so WWE would have to plan accordingly, and Thursday doesn't seem to be a bad night imo. Nothing notable airing that I can recall, and it does give them competition against TNA and other people. It also makes sense as Smackdown was aired on Thursday in the past before being moved to Friday. Doing this would essentially force Main Event to be moved to Thursday as well though, as WWE would more than likely move live events to Tuesday than Thursday, unless they desired to air a live Main Event before a house show, which doesn't make too much sense... However, the whole question of when NXT would air also comes into play, but that could be placed on Tuesday as well. It would give more time for any script changes, which could lead to better or worse happenings. It all comes down to booking really.

At the end of the day though, I see no point in having to make it go live. If they were given more time to make changes to the script, I understand how that could benefit Smackdown, but if the show should be good, then I don't see how any more changes should make it any better.

 

[Wacokid27]

Waco, you said in another thread how to fix Smackdown. Either put 2 Smackdown-exclusive storylines on it or bring back the brand split and put a bunch of great wrestling talent on it.

The 2 SD-exclusive storylines (or however many they wanted to do) are ideal if you maintain one brand. As to the brand split, going Raw and Smackdown again would be good, but....

I posted a couple of months back what I would actually do if I had the authority and ability to do it.

I would reactivate the WCW brand and have a true brand split between WWE, WCW, and NXT. WWE Raw would air on USA on Monday and be live. WCW Nitro would air live on Syfy on Tuesday. WWE Smackdown would be recorded and air on Thursday and WCW Thunder would be taped and air on Friday. NXT (I'd call it NXT Main Event) would be on Wednesdays and another NXT show (Superstars?) would air on Saturday. Smackdown, Thunder, Main Event, and Superstars would all be exclusively on the WWEN (unless you could put something together and have NXT Main Event be broadcast on an NBC/Universal network).

The three brands would operate independently and there would be extremely limited crossover (the occasional invasion-type storyline, at least on a small scale, could happen every now and again, but very rarely). WCW and WWE would each have 4 independent PPV's while they would participate together during Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, and Survivor Series (those are actually good opportunities for crossovers - The Royal Rumble would include 30 wrestlers, 13 from WWE, 13 from WCW, and 4 from NXT, a traditional Survivor Series match between a team from WWE and a team from WCW, an NXT Championship match during Wrestlemania or Summerslam to go with title matches for the main titles, that sort of thing). My plan also called for NXT PPV's every other month and "off-seasons" for WWE and WCW (WWE from Mania to Summerslam and WCW from Summerslam to Survivor Series). Obviously, details would have to be worked out and questions answered, but it's a bare-bones idea.

The other thing you could do is a "draft" on an annual basis to "shake things up" and move guys around. Also, you could work angles where guys become "free agents". Also, NXT personnel would be called up as necessary or as desired.

That, to me, would be the ideal scenario.

wk

 

[The GOAT]

Yeah, it actually cost millions more to leave the production trucks out a few extra days to film Smackdown as a live show (according to Lance Storm on his website awhile back.)

Whether a show is live or taped hardly makes any difference as to the quality of the show, though. Although I do prefer that "Live" feeling to the show, but still. Spoilers I don't believe have much effect either. Most people probably don't even read spoilers, and the majority of the ones that do are likely to tune into the show regardless imo.

Plus, historically speaking, whether the show is live or taped has virtually no effect on the television ratings, and if there was ever any incentive for WWE to take Smackdown live, it would be that one. When the WWF rebounded in 1998 and the ratings started going through the roof and they began defeating a LIVE Monday Nitro in Nielsen ratings every week, Raw was still a taped show, hence why Bischoff was able to give away Mankind's first title win in early '99 (which backfired on Bischoff BIG TIME considering millions of viewers immediately switched over from Nitro to Raw to see the title switch, which just serves to illustrate my point about spoilers being almost a non-factor in viewership numbers.) Raw only began airing live on a weekly basis sometime in the Spring or Summer of 1999. Yet ratings had already improved tremendously by then.

Anyway, Smackdown nowadays is a sub-par show, and one that I can barely bother tuning into when I actually remember it's on at all, and whether it's taped or live wouldn't change that.

 

[ShaRpY HaRdY]

Well since Main Event is already live on Tuesdays on the Network, do you think it would improve Network buys if they used the same production Crew and aired SmackDown live on the Network right after on Tuesdays while still releasing the tapings to the "public" on Fridays.

I get where you're coming from in spoilers don't turn people away and I can see two sides to that; one if someone reads a spoiler and it turns out something legit as fuck happened then they actually might be more inclined to watch the program that they don't really care to watch. On the flip side however people read the spoilers and see that jack shit is happening and don't care to spend the time to watch it. Honestly the two balance each other out when it comes to ratings and viewership. You're probably right though in saying that spoilers don't affect the numbers by much but idk I still see declines (not big by any means just like a matter of maybe 5,000 to 10,000 viewers average) every couple of weeks and usually it's on weeks where there doesn't seem to be much on the card itself but then again that could also be a coincidental thing seeing as there are numerous other live events that happen Fridays; Baseball, Basketball, Hockey for example.

 

[The GOAT]

Well since Main Event is already live on Tuesdays on the Network, do you think it would improve Network buys if they used the same production Crew and aired SmackDown live on the Network right after on Tuesdays while still releasing the tapings to the "public" on Fridays.

No. Like I said, whether the show is live or taped has showed to have no effect on the ratings in the past. That includes when it comes to getting people to purchase the Network as well, and all it would do is make people that are already subscribed to the Network less likely to tune into TV to watch it, meaning a decrease in ratings. And if they were gonna put Smackdown on the Network at all, they'd pull it off television completely (as they did with Main Event) and make it a Network-exclusive to make seeing it more alluring in an attempt to get more subscribers for the Network. They'd be an unwise move for two reasons:

1. It's practically a guaranteed that the amount of new Network subscribers wouldn't offset the amount of money they make from ad sales by airing the show on television. On top of that, they love the accolade of being able to tout Smackdown as "one of the longest running episodic television shows in history" (almost fifteen years going.) That bragging right would be gone if it was a Network-exclusive.

2. You can't really expect it to make much of a difference anyway. As it is, you already get every brand new monthly PPV on top of everything else (a long list of "Specials" and Reality-TV series, every episode of Raw/Smackdown ever aired, every PPV in history from WWE/WCW/ECW, etc.) when you decide to purchase the Network, and if all of that isn't enough to get people to subscribe to the Network, then I can't see Smackdown having a significant effect either.

 

[Snowman1]

If I was WWE, I'd love to know what it would take for the at least 4 million wrestling fans out there, minus the 600,000 or whatever that did, to purchase the Network. Smackdown obviously wouldn't be it...

 

[Muur]

They pretty much wrestle everyday due to House Sows, not much would change really they'd just be live on a Tuesday as well as Monday and some Sundays... then the rest of week is the house shows. They're gonna be knackered either way

 

[Leo C]

If I was WWE, I'd love to know what it would take for the at least 4 million wrestling fans out there, minus the 600,000 or whatever that did, to purchase the Network. Smackdown obviously wouldn't be it...

Does the Network have enough Bob Backlund? There should be AT LEAST an entire reality show based around his life. If that's not the case, there you go.