ktc

Dueling Chair Shots
by Kurt La Mont
Column date 10/12/2000

With ECW officially being off of TNN now and currently not having a national cable TV presence there are many rumors and theories being bandied about out there on ECW. Let's take a look at a number of them.

Without a national TV deal ECW is in grave condition

While not having a national TV presence isn't something that ECW wants, it will be a far from devastating. ECW will still have its' syndicated program in place. They survived up to August of 1999 using only the syndicated program, and now this program is in many more markets than it was before. And not only is it in more markets but it is in all of it's major markets. If you are in a good ECW city you should still be able to watch ECW on a weekly basis, ECW will still come to your town, and you will still be able to watch the PPVs. If you don't get the syndicated show you can watch it on the internet at www.americaone.com at midnight on Saturdays.

But what about ECW financially? Won't ECW not being on TNN hurt them financially?

Well, the only real gain ECW got from TNN was from their own ads (hotline, videos, and website) which I imagine is minimal. TNN claimed all of the advertising revenue from the show as well as taking a percentage of ECW's revenues over the past year. So in that regard not being on TNN has minimal impact either way.

So ECW is essentially at the same place they were in the summer of 1998. While they are far from thriving they are far from folding. A national TV deal is very important but getting the right TV deal is more important than just having any TV deal as we have found out from the TNN experience over the past year.

Because ECW has no national TV deal many wrestlers are looking to leave

I've read this on two different 'prominent' wrestling websites. I think this is a ludicrous statement. The question I have is who would leave and where would they go?

Heyman has said that he has everyone that he feels is important to ECW under contract. And if you don't think these contracts are enforceable ask Sabu. So I think that has things covered as far as defections go.

And even if someone does want to leave where are they going? WCW is more concerned with dumping contracts than picking them up and the WWF has more wrestlers than they know what to do with at this point. Who in ECW would be able to step into WWF and make any kind of impact? Probably only a handful and of those they are all in prominent spots in ECW and it would make no sense for them to leave. With the WWF talent roster loaded and WCW cutting costs there aren't any good alternatives for a wrestler to go.

ECW's poor ratings are all TNN's fault

A lack of advertising from TNN will cause ECW to sue TNN for breach of contract shortly. From what I have read I would say ECW probably has a very strong case. If TNN promoted ECW more and they had a better time slot than Friday night would ratings be better? Probably.

On the flip side without much help ECW grew their rating over the first few months from a 0.8 in the first month up to a 1.3 rating. Since then it has gone back down to 0.8 range, bottoming out last week at 0.6 (more than a 50% drop). This drop cannot be put on TNN's shoulders. If the time slot bounced all over the place then maybe you could justify the drop but ECW appeared at 8 PM every Friday.

Let's flash back to the beginning of the year. At that time we were getting a healthy dose of Mike Awesome and Tanaka matches. Raven and Tommy Dreamer was still moving along. The Impact Players were going after the tag team belts. Super Crazy was being Super Crazy.

Over the next few months we saw Mike Awesome and Lance Storm leave. Tanaka went back to Japan. Heyman pulled the plug on the Dreamer/Raven angle because Raven wasn't being a team player. Super Crazy then went on hiatus.

Since then the quality of the matches shown on TV has gone down as any major matches have been saved for PPVs. The only significant angle going on for much of this year has been the Network angle that I think a majority of people thinks has run its course at this time.

It's been a long time since ECW has had an angle that makes you eager to see what will happen next. When you don't have that you create a lot of disinterest and I think that has been a large reason why we have seen the rating decline steadily this year.

So is TNN all to blame for the low rating? I would say the low rating is joint effort of ECW and TNN.

More good stuff next week. Send any feedback to me at [email protected]

Past editions of Dueling Chair Shots
10/4
10/16
10/27
11/5
11/10
11/17
11/19
12/03
12/10
12/17
01/03
01/19
01/29
02/04
02/14
02/22
02/29
03/06
03/13
03/20
04/12
04/28
05/08
05/18
05/23
05/30
06/05
06/13
06/21
06/29
07/06
07/11
07/17
07/24
08/01
08/07
08/20
08/30
09/06
09/14
09/20
09/27

10/05