No Review of the ECW PPV, for the time being

Wrestling had a big night last night with the return of ECW to PPV and the “beginning” of the promotion once again. For those who don’t know, this is the second ECW PPV of the WWE owned era, with the first being last years One Night Stand. I ordered that PPV, and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything on the card that had me pumped to order this year’s PPV, even with the temptation of the RVD vs. John Cena title fight. In addition, for 39.99, it was ust not worth it in my opinion. WWE is just charging too much money for their PPVs, and I’m not going to order them, again.

Actually, it’s been some time since I ordered a PPV from WWE….I think the last one I ordered was last years One Night Stand. I keep all the PPVs I order on my DVR, so I’ll have to go back and check. Since then, the only PPVs I’ve ordered are for TNA, which at 29.99 seems like a deal now.

Back when they first started streamlining PPVs on their website, WWE only charged 14.99 for a PPV. This was a deal to me, because more often than not I could afford to drop 15 bucks, so I would. When I could afford 29.99 or 34.99, I’d pay those amounts to watch it on TV, but most of the time in college 14.99 was all I could afford. Well, then WWE jacked the price up to the same as you pay for it on TV, and thus I had no cheaper alternative to do when things were tight. This, in my eyes, has leaded me to order less PPVs from WWE. Well, that and the fact their TV is so horrible. It’s easy not to order a PPV that you could give two craps about.

ECW might change this, since it’s not going to be like WWE TV, at least not for the time being. I’m going to record their TV on Sci-Fi this Tuesday (yes that’s’ right, they are on the Sci-Fi channel for right now) and I’ll have a review of what that’s like when I get a chance to watch it. As for why ECW will appear on Sci-Fi…well, it’s actually very easy. Sci-Fi, along with USA, are both owned by NBC/Universal (as is Bravo, CNBC, CNBC World, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Weather Plus, ShopNBC, Telemundo, Telemundo Puerto Rico, Sleuth, Universal HD and they have investments in A&E, The History Channel, History Channel International, The Biography Channel, National Geographic International, the Sundance Channel, and Tivo).

What does that mean? Well, WWE has a television agreement with NBC/Universal, which is why RAW airs on USA, and a few WWE specials (Saturday Nights Main Event) air on NBC. WWE had a new product they wanted to air, ECW, and went to NBC with it. NBC was hesitant about putting ECW, an unproven commodity at this point, on USA so they struck an agreement to air it for 13 weeks (I might be a bit off on this) on Scf-Fi to test it out. Why Sci-Fi? Why not? Sci-Fi really doesn’t have a whole lot going for it ratings wise, although it does have a very very proven and loyal fan base. So, NBC figured that putting ECW on there for a test run would be a safe bet because even if Sci-Fi’s current fan base got upset, they’d still tune in to the other shows, and if ECW can pop a 2 or 3 in the ratings it would be higher than anything else on the network, which in turn they hope will increase add revenues.

So, that’s, in a nutshell, why ECW is on Sci-Fi this Tuesday, and for the next twelve Tuesdays after that. If you want a more in-depth explanation, get a member ship to PWInsider.com and listen to the Hot News Hotlines that deal with it. Dave, Buck, and Mike do a much better job explaining things than I do and mention the people actually involved at NBC who made the deal happen. It should be interested to see how things turn out, since NBC has been promoting the swap with adds here and there, and WWE is of course pushing the show hard on RAW and SMACKDOWN.

-Steve