In this weekly column, I will comment on the past week's goings-on in WOW, and whatever else it occurs to me to discuss :-) I also hope that a big part of the column will be printing and responding to your e-mails. So please send them in (the address is thatthing35@yahoo.com)!
3/19/2001: Can WOW Get a Free Ride?
This week's big news is that WOW broke the wall of corporate silence by issuing this press release entitled "Women of Wrestling Has Completed its First Season". Kudos to the press release writer, because just as the textbook suggests, the main points are laid out in the title and in the very first paragraph:
"WOW Entertainment, Inc. announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary's weekly syndicated television series, WOW -- Women of Wrestling®, will commence reruns of its original twenty-three episodes."
In between this sentence and the title of the press release, WOW is trying to give the impression that the current break in tapings is business as usual. Of course, fans of the show know that this isn't true. WOW was not planning to take this hiatus, and in fact, tickets were made available for another taping before it was cancelled. At the time, WOW said that the reason the taping was cancelled was that "the girls needed a rest." That was a lie, as we can see now from the fact that it is almost two months later and there are still no tapings even planned. Make no mistake: The reason WOW is not taping right now is related to their gloomy financial situation, and has nothing to do with the "completion of the season."
"The Company has also decided against paying any further promotional or other compensation in exchange for airing its show."
Now here is the interesting part. Here's what this means, simply put. WOW used to pay TV stations to put WOW on the air. WOW can no longer afford to do this. Take out all the spin; that's the bottom line.
Here is what they plan to do instead. They are going to go to the stations and say, "We can prove to you that our show can draw better ratings than other things you can air in its time slot, and that it can increase the ratings of the program that airs before it as well. (WOW's press release claiming this) So, why don't you put us on the air without charging us, and you can air commercials for your other shows during WOW, and make money when the viewership for those other shows goes up."
If the stations buy this argument, it will do wonders for WOW's finances. Buying the TV time is a huge expense for WOW. If the stations go along with this plan, that expense will be reduced to zero. But, the key here is: Will the stations go along?
Well, obviously WNYW in New York City and KCOP in Los Angeles were not too thrilled about this policy. Those were both pretty devastating losses, along with Boston; Denver; Portland, OR; Austin, TX; Harrisburg, PA; and (thanks to Xenophobe for reporting this) Peoria, IL. It will be tough enough without those stations...but is that the full extent of the fallout of this decision, or will more stations drop WOW? We will see in the next few weeks. My prediction -- and this is based on common sense, not on any knowledge of the TV industry -- is that at least a good number of stations are going to say "No, thanks, we'd rather get the sure money and give the time to someone who will pay us up front." And furthermore, I would think that the bigger stations would have more alternatives than the smaller stations, and would be less likely to go for WOW under these conditions. So, under this depressing scenario, WOW will end up being on fewer and smaller stations. I hope I'm wrong. We'll see.
I am also very anxious to see WOW's next quarterly financial statement, which should be out in the next few weeks as well. In the quarter ending Nov. 30, 2000, WOW brought in $92,000 and spent $2.915 million. You don't need a business degree from Wharton to realize that that's an extremely discouraging financial statement. At that point, the show had been on the air only two months, and there had not yet been a PPV. Will the next quarterly report be better because of those factors...or even worse?
If you look at the bottom of that financial statement ("Liquidity and Capital Resources") and translate it into English, you will see that WOW basically has no cash ($148,000 as of 11/30/2000). They have been getting by because one of WOW's owners, the aptly named Carter M. Fortune, keeps loaning the company money. I have no idea how much money Mr. Fortune has to his name, but if they keep losing $3 million a quarter, either he is gonna run out of money or he is gonna get real, real tired of writing checks.
Bottom line: For WOW's sake, let's hope that in six weeks, we can say these two things: 1) "Damn, I haven't heard of them losing a TV station in six weeks." 2) "Damn, that quarterly statement looked a lot better than the last one."
Some other points from the recent press release:
- No mention is made of the "Spring Vengeance" PPV, although I don't
think we need a press release to know that it is not going to happen.
- WOW is "actively working to distribute programming through a cable or
network outlet." I'm sure they are, and (if you look at the very end of
that financial statement) they were doing the same thing three months ago, and
so are half the people in Hollywood. So that means nothing.
- They are "also currently negotiating a tour of the show in the Middle
East during May 2001." Interesting only because, according to someone on
the WOW board, they had denied this very recently. Why they even want to do
it, I have no idea, but who knows, maybe there's a good reason.
- WOW "sponsored a car in the Daytona ARCA 200 race last month." I'm
sure Vince McMahon is quaking at this coup by WOW.
- WOW "revamped its Internet site (wowe.com) during the last week in February.
Since the website changes were implemented, impressions have increased by more
than 200%." I doubt this is true any longer, since traffic on the message
board has slacked off considerably since the show went into re-runs. But certainly
the new website has vastly superior content to the old one, and obviously, people
have noticed.
This week, apparently show #4 was re-run as originally aired; in other words, there was no new angle development. That's fine with me, since I was scared that if they continued developing angles without some wrestling matches to go along with them, the cheesiness factor would increase drastically. I also applaud the straight re-broadcast because I didn't like the shifty thing they did last week when they pretended that the re-run matches were new. Re-running show #4 does mean Riot vs. Caliente was run twice in two weeks...and furthermore, it was run once with commentary to make it sound like a new match, and once with the original commentary. I'm sure that will confuse the heck out of some people.
Last week, I encouraged people to contact their local TV stations and support WOW. But I doubt that anyone is going to convince stations to show WOW for free if they don't want to. So, I guess rather than bother the TV stations, if you really want to support WOW, give them money :-) Buy merchandise... go to the shows and buy the PPVs, if they ever have shows or PPVs again... and you could even (gulp) buy stock in WOW. (Disclaimer: Look very carefully at that financial statement before you do such a thing.)
Here's the punchline to this lengthy column: In spite of everything I've just discussed, in six weeks, we may also be able to say that WOW is the #2 wrestling promotion. ECW is in an even more hopeless situation than WOW, and it is not looking too super for WCW either. Says more about the state of the industry than anything else, obviously.
No mailbag this week. YOUR LETTER COULD GO HERE!
Only character page update this week is Patti Pizzazz.
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(e-mail: thatthing35@yahoo.com)