Vice Media published a tremendous story on WWE behind the scenes, written by Ian Frisch on 12/9. The story included the first revelation that in 2012, Shane McMahon made a major pitch to head creative and was rebuffed.
The story was that in March 2012, leading up to that year’s WrestleMania, Vince McMahon called a surprise meeting at the WWE Production Office, and Shane McMahon was there with James Frey, the author of “A Million Little Pieces” and CEO of Full Fathom Five, a content creation company.
“When Stephanie found out Shane was going to be there, she went white in the face” the story quoted a source as saying. “And Paul (Levesque) freaked out.” Shane had set up the meeting through Kevin Dunn, WWE’s Executive Vice President of Production (Dunn was the same person who was the conduit to John Gaburick when TNA attempted to sell the company, largely for the value of the videotape library as the company wouldn’t have continued to operate). “Kevin Dunn is very close to Shane. And there’s tremendous tension between Kevin and Paul and Stephanie. They feel like the company is theirs, but they don’t have the power to control Kevin.”
It’s been talked about for years that if Vince McMahon is no longer running the company that Dunn would be gone very quickly and replaced by someone of the Levesque’s choosing. But as long as Vince McMahon is there, Dunn is considered untouchable, although given McMahon’s track record of getting tired of people closest to him in business, it’s an anomaly that Dunn has lasted as long as he has and is considered in that category. But as much as people running the network or in creative come and go, Dunn, George Barrios and Michelle Wilson remain the longest lasting and most powerful people in the company not named McMahon.
The article was not without some issues. It described the period from 2002 to 2010 as an upswing for the company, even though popularity fell greatly. Attendance did pick up from a bottoming out period in the middle of the decade when John Cena turned into a legitimate drawing card and for the most part business has been steady for years. But at no point has the company come close to its 1998-2001 popularity levels, and while there have been ups and downs, it has been at best staying even or a slow decline.
It also stated that Stephanie McMahon was moved from creative to Chief Brand Office in 2013, which is correct, but it stated she worked in creative for two years before that, when it was more like13 years. Brian Gewirtz made it clear that Stephanie did no writing while on creative and her role was really organizing meetings and hiring the writing staff.
It described a normal week of Raw as that the 16 segments are pitched to Vince McMahon on Thursday or Friday. Vince gives his feedback and the scripts are changed over the weekend, with the writers often staying in the office past midnight. Then they meet again on Monday, where Vince either signs off, or makes more changes.
Gewirtz noted it’s not smart to fight Vince over late script changes.
“It can get you in trouble if you take a fight to Vince,” he said. “You need to be careful in how you speak your mind and not get carried away. He urges people to say their opinions but ultimately he makes the decision.”
There was an unnamed former top executive who said that, “All Vince cares about is that night’s show–not 15 weeks later, like how all other television shows work. That’s why you see astute followers pulling their hair out. There’s no guiding principle other than Vince is carnival barker–a promoter of a live event product.”
The story also noted the rapid turnaround in the people both in creative and of those show that work the closest with Vince McMahon.
“Outside people will get killed unless they totally conform to what Vince wants–it’s impossible to do that,” said the former top executive. “Vince, Paul and Stephanie will blame everyone else for their own missteps. That’s why no creative executive can last there. You are treated like a commodity-just a barrel of corn. You are only apiece of talent, cultivated and developed, until they need to blame you and fire you and bring someone else in. They like the appearance of hiring people from outside the wrestling industry, but in the end, it’s still Vince making all the decisions.”
It was almost an amazing coincidence that the story came out the day after Tom Casiello, who was No. 3 on the creative end under Vince and Levesque, was let go. While the timing has made people speculate the two were related, we can’t find any indication of that at all.
Casiello, who was the Managing Lead Writer, essentially the person who oversaw both the Raw and Smackdown writing team and worked directly under Vince and Paul Levesque.
He, Vince and Levesque were in charge of the big picture creative, although obviously Vince was the key guy of both Raw and Smackdown, while Levesque is in charge of NXT.
Casiello had been in the position for about a year, and had started with WWE in 2011.
He had written soap operas such as Another World, As the World Turns, Days of our Lives, One Life to Live and The Young and the Restless from 1998 to 2006. In 2001 and 2002, he won Daytime Emmy awards for best writing for As The World Turns and was nominated for the same award in 2006 when writing for One Life to live.
The way it was explained to the writing team, and to him as well, is that the position of Managing Lead Writer had been eliminated. The lead writer on Raw (Ed Koskey) and Smackdown (Ryan Ward and Brian James, the latter who is being groomed for a bigger role since he’s close to Levesque) will now report directly to Levesque, who reports to Vince. Dave Kapoor, a former head writer (who was once Ranjin Singh as a TV character, as the supposed brother of the Great Khali) is currently an assignment editor for both brands, deciding which writer or writers works on which promos or segments.
Casiello was described as very strong as far as pushing the women in particular. He pushed hard for them to be featured more prominently and was the key person who got Vince McMahon to change his mind late and put Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks last at the Hell in a Cell show. He was also the key writer of a lot of the women’s segments.
The firing was described as a big surprise since the women’s division, which he championed, now has to be deemed as a success based on the rating for the 11/28 Raw show. He was well respected among the women performers in particular and worked with them a lot on ideas for Total Divas as well.
He was described to me as a good writer but not as influential as the title sounds, although he did have influence. Several company wrestlers said that he was highly regarded by them. He was told it was simply the elimination of the position and part of budget cuts, but that doesn’t hold water, since, as a few pointed out, he could have been given a new role within the writing team if they were eliminating that specific position, and if it was budget cuts, why was nobody else let go nor any other budget cuts made at the same time, past the elimination of the pre-game show on the network and dropping of Jerry Lawler and Amy Dumas’ deals last week. Plus, this comes at a time the company is financially healthy.
As of the end of September, there have been 4,975,000 different accounts that have signed up for the WWE Network, and of those, at one point or another, 3,531,000 have canceled. Keep in mind that a great number of people are likely counted twice or three times or more in this, as these stats would be the number of total times people have signed up and canceled, whether it be letting it go and coming back later, or changing the account to sign up in a different country before it was available and changing after, or canceling to take advantage of a gimmick offer and using a new account.
The article took a more balanced approach to the network, noting things we’ve written about. While it is profitable on its own, that it has yet to be as effective in generating profits as the old system because of the costs involved and the profit margin on the network is much lower than that of a PPV. The network will pay off in the long run. If you want to figure it out by the number and profits, right now in a month that would generate 264,000 worldwide PPVs (which the big three shows were beating handily but the other shows were not), that’s the line where the network is either more or less effective than PPV. Now keep in mind when you have a two-show month, that goes down to 132,000 buys per show, but I can’t imagine they’d be doing two traditional PPVs per month if they didn’t have the network, so that makes a direct comparison even more difficult.
The company has done extensive market research in recent weeks and months to find out why people are buying it and why subscribers let their subscriptions go.
Some feel the network could be more profitable without the first-run non-in-ring programming. The feeling is they don’t increase subscribers, since the ebbs and flows are clearly based around the PPV shows each month. But there is the feeling there is long-term value in creating content and that the network needs to be far more than just in-ring action.
With the exception of the PPV shows and NXT Takeover shows, it is that new programming along with the weekly NXT and 205 Live shows, as well as the Talking Smack show that seem to be the most-watched things. But that programming is also the most expensive to produce and some will argue that WWE doesn’t promote its archival footage but promotes the new shows the heaviest, so it’s a chicken-and-egg proposition regarding what gets the most viewership other than the PPVs, NXT and now cruiserweight shows. Main Event doesn’t do anywhere near as well as the other shows, since that’s a more lifeless although up to date show that features main roster talent.
The idea we had talked about when the network started, regarding having a set time each week and uploading one episode each week in order from all the different old libraries, in order, so newer fans can follow the old storylines is one that has never been tried. Some of the libraries aren’t complete and in other cases, because of the musical content on so many of the shows in the 80s, the costs of getting it network ready and getting rid of the old music is rather expensive. The focus when it comes to the old programming seems to be of the late 90s boom period, of WWF, WCW and ECW.
The only time the old programming shows up as significantly watched is when something unique happens currently, such as Bill Goldberg’s return leading to a lot of Goldberg WCW footage being watched as well as the match with Brock Lesnar leading to WrestleMania XX getting a lot of views.
The article gave the impression, without outright saying it, that the big picture problem is the one thing that can’t change, which is Vince McMahon in charge. The reality is that WWE is a successful business that dominates its genre and that isn’t going to change. They are healthy. Of course they could be hotter and stronger. The way the business is set up, they are also set up to be healthy as long as they don’t collapse into extreme WCW-level stupidity, which won’t happen as long as Vince or Levesque are in charge, or unless the TV economics change, which is something nobody can predict and is out of everyone’s control.
There are issues that are the same with many sports, in the sense that the key profit driver is television and due to that, because their shows still are among the highest rated on cable, and they are producing too many hours. That is the history of television with anything popular and one of the reasons many things burn out on television.
But even with the lowest ratings in history and so-so arena business, the television revenue is fixed and continues to rise, and as long as it does, the company will remain healthy.
One of the themes of the article is that Paul Levesque, who will almost surely be in charge of creative if and when Vince is no longer in that position, is an old school wrestling guy with the idea from Gewirtz, that such a philosophy limits growth. The idea is that the company is doing, from an athletic standpoint, its best matches ever on a consistent basis, but doesn’t have the widespread appeal as shown by ratings and attendance of the peak periods.
It’s a weird situation because the wrestling audience is constantly changing. The current audience is more into wrestling and will spend more on it than any audience before, but it’s also smaller and has a mind of its own.
It’s harder to control, hence the multi-year failure of making Roman Reigns into the face of the company.
The problem is, that is the only audience left. If it didn’t require so much time to keep up with wrestling, would there be more of a casual audience? Who knows, but they aren’t cutting back on the hours of programming. Would there be more fans if they concentrated more on the old vision of good looking larger-than-life stars as opposed to guys who grew up as Bret Hart, Mick Foley and Shawn Michaels fans and whose goal is to put on great matches or get over taking big bumps? There isn’t a Dwayne Johnson or a Steve Austin, but John Cena is becoming a crossover star and Brock Lesnar comes across as a legitimate tough guy as much as any wrestler from any time period, and the company pushed the two as its biggest stars. These are the flaws that get talked about regularly.
And things do vary, which tells us that stuff matters. House shows have gone down with John Cena out of the mix. Ratings were at rock bottom and this fall season was looking to be a disaster from that standpoint in September, but once Bill Goldberg came back and other things fell into place, things did improve. But even if that hadn’t have happened, the way the business is structured, things are still healthy, and will remain healthy as long as they can continually increase television revenue.
If streaming services get aggressive in wanting to compete with television years from now, WWE has a large enough and loyal enough fan base that if there becomes competition for their rights that business will only boom. If that doesn’t happen, and television stations have less revenue, who knows how WWE will fit into the picture.
In the end, it is these outside market forces that will tell the future of the WWE business, not short-term creative, and not Vince McMahon. As people like to point out, the WWE brand that gets the most consistently positive reaction is NXT, which has the fewest viewers and draws the least. Smackdown is more widely praised as a television show than Raw, but Raw does more viewers and draws more fans on the road. In the end, it’s not the creative or the television show quality but the perception of what is important, which is why nobody can compete with WWE, even if they were on national television and put on a better product, because even so, the perception would be it’s not as important.
Shane McMahon, is generally considered a nice guy and when he was with the company, he was very popular among those who worked for him. His lone outside business venture, trying to navigate in the tough Chinese market with video-on-demand, has thus far been a financial disaster and the article pointed that out. The article noted that because of his non-compete deal with You on Demand, he actually can’t work for WWE in going into the Chinese market. Even though he hasn’t been a success in that market, he would have more experience with it than anyone in the current upper management structure.
Shane has always wanted to prove he can run a business, both when he figured this business would be his at one point, and after, when it became clear it would be Paul & Stephanie’s.
Over the years, he’s had opportunities to purchase the UFC, Pride, Strikeforce, wanted to be in charge of the rebranded ECW the way Levesque is with NXT, and even wanted to buy a soccer team.
But, in almost all cases, due to decisions by Vince, none of those deals transpired. Right now he is solely a television character, a good face for Smackdown because he is popular with the audience. Yet even so, Raw is still the “A” show and the “A” touring brand. That was the case even when Cena was appearing regularly. Shane is also appearing less-and-less on the Smackdown shows, with Daniel Bryan more-and-more coming across as the authority face of the brand.
