WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff recently took to his "the 83 Weeks" Podcast, where he talked about how Tony Khan has done a great job with the recent AEW signings, but that if he were Tony Khan then he would slow down with all the upcoming surprises.
Eric Bischoff said:
“If I were in Tony Khan’s shoes, I would give the surprises a breather.” “They’ve done a great job, they’ve gotten tremendous return on their investment. It’s served its purpose beyond expectation in my opinion. But I would give that a rest because when I watch wrestling, when I think about wrestling, when I talk about wrestling, I’m thinking almost exclusively about the business to business side of it. I’m more interested in the business to business side of today’s wrestling industry more than I am in what’s going on in the ring.”
Eric Bischoff also talked about why he believes AEW should hold off on a potential Bray Wyatt debut.
Eric Bischoff said:
“That’s a good place to go because you can keep your powder there because nobody sees you and it doesn’t matter how bad it is.” “Let’s just assume Bray Wyatt is going to end up [in AEW]. I wouldn’t do that till after the first of [January]. I’d save that for the first quarter of next year because they’ve had so many signings, and they’re great ones too. I’m not being critical or dismissing them in any form. You got Sting, Christian Cage, CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Ruby Soho, etc.”
“These are super talented assets, they’ve brought in so many great assets over such a short period of time they tend to dilute each other and it’s not as meaningful as it could be, in my opinion, if they were spaced out a little more. That’s why if I was bringing in Bray Wyatt, if I was Tony Khan, I’d lay off the surprises and the chatter about who’s coming in and not coming in and more for the audience. It’s like a roller coaster and we’ve been on this incredible, exciting roller coaster ride, and the only way you’re going to enjoy the next big exhilaration point on that roller coaster is to get a little bit of a rest. Take it down, slow it down so that when you speed it up again and take the audience to that peak of that moment and deliver your next surprise, just give them a rest so they’ve got more energy to get ready for that ride. It’s not fatigue, don’t get me wrong, but we’re getting close to surprise fatigue.”
Eric Bischoff then talked about why he doesn’t think AEW Dynamite moving to TBS on January 5, 2022 is necessarily a good thing for the Dynamite show.
Eric Bischoff said:
“That’s another interesting thing, when people say TBS is available in more households, I think that’s true, but do as many people watch it?” “Just because it’s available in more households doesn’t mean people watch more of it or as many people watch it. I’m not saying TBS is a bad choice, but TNT is a better destination. TNT has sports. I know TBS used to have baseball. This wasn’t voluntary I’m sure, Tony Khan didn’t get to vote, I’m sure. He may have well negotiated some things into it but he didn’t get to vote and nobody called to ask for permission, and that’s bad. That’s a challenge with being on a network like TNT that does carry sports. We’ll see; my experience was the world has changed, but my experience back when I was doing this for a living was that wrestling has a unique advantage in that its audience is far more loyal than just about any other type of programming, other than football, and basketball, and baseball.”
“I think wrestling fans are as loyal as those sports franchise fans, they will follow you. They’ll find you. On a typical scripted show, it’s a kiss of death if you’ve done what AEW has done and launched your show, been there for 24 months, had some great success, continuing to grow your audience. But with wrestling, not so much because of the loyalty of the audience. I don’t have experience or data to back this up, but maybe 5% or 10% of the audience won’t follow that. I would expect a minor drop in ratings, especially for the first couple of weeks. It seems like Tony likes surprises and keeps the audience on balance, and maybe they’re going to do something.”
Eric Bischoff then continued to talk about how Bray Wyatt should make his AEW debut when AEW Dynamite moves to TBS in January 2022, so that the anticipation of the fans will be there and their fans would follow them and still tune in to Dynamite each and every week.
Eric Bischoff said:
“When are they moving there, in January? Bray Wyatt, oh my god, I just put the pieces of the puzzle together for everybody for free.” “Maybe there’s a moment like that that Tony can keep in his back pocket so that when he does move over to TBS, they’ve got several weeks on TNT to tell everybody when and where they’re going to be and at the same time. Build anticipation much like they have with Punk and Danielson. Then 99.999% of the people that watch your show on TNT will probably follow you over, and you’ll see no loss in viewership. I think it’s a neutral move. I think it’s going to take a little bit of creativity to maximize or mitigate and shift because people are creatures of habit.”
“Not everybody is like that, and they might not make a special note that AEW is moving over to TBS and might not check it out for a while. The way to mitigate that is to have several weeks where you promote that something big is going to happen with this big move. Go back and look at a lot of stuff WWE was doing when they were going to move to FOX. A smaller version of that will work and it’ll be just fine. I don’t think there will be more viewers because they’re on TBS. I don’t believe that, but I don’t think they’re going to take a big hit either.”
