An interesting read but they can kindly shut the hell up about feeling like they're stealing money from Vince at $9.99 a month. I hesitate to say that they'd lose me as a subscriber if the price went up, but it would certainly be more likely to cause me to go the half a year that would include Royal Rumble & Wrestlemania if they keep the 6 month committment thing intact.
"You are going to get a certain amount of snarkiness on the Internet no matter what, and my rule is that you don't post anything that you wouldn't say to someone's face." Marc Andreyko (Writer of DC Comic's "Manhunter")
Originally posted by DrewDewceI hesitate to say that they'd lose me as a subscriber if the price went up, but it would certainly be more likely to cause me to go the half a year that would include Royal Rumble & Wrestlemania if they keep the 6 month committment thing intact.
I'm more or less in the same boat but I would find it hard to justify spending more than $15 a month. I think the price hike will come when they recalibrate and analyze their numbers post-Mania. I'm not sure $10/month is sustainable for the WWE without mass numbers, if at all.
Originally posted by odessasteps I wouls suggest people check out Bix's twitter feed to see all the errors in the grantland article .
Can we get a Cliffnotes version?
His twitter feed is like a Beliebers.
I wasn't going to post in this thread at all and I was so easily tricked into writing a 1000 words. I'm a fool.
The easy version is Phil Lafon & Doug Furnas were/are not French, HHH & Batista was actually a good feud and a lot of the things Simmons and Shoemaker were surprised to find on the Network were very publicly announced well in advance. And none of that is corrected in the article or will be corrected.
The harder version is Shoemaker is generally not as good as his Grantland/ESPN rep. Both his columns and his book had factual errors which could've been fixed with some better Googling (or a more versed fan reading thru it. His bigger weakness is just missing the point, inventing unifying theories out of disparate events ("the Reality Era") and trying to latch everything to it. Or, to steal someone else's line...
The Tons of Funk breakup is not a reflection of the fragmented notion of self in the internet age.
He also comes off as surprisingly under informed for someone supposed to be covering WWE. It's not even just that he doesn't know seem to know the Observer/Torch stuff until it's reported elsewhere, but I think the general poster on this board appears to be more informed on what's going on. Shoemaker definitely has leveraged his ESPN fan into acquiring sources outside the usual sphere and that gives him information other people have, but he's missing on the easier stuff.
Shoemaker's presented as the Most Educated Wrestling Fan Ever, which would've rubbed people the wrong way even if he was dead on with everything.
And all of that is missing the point of the article, the one they took quite a while to get to - WWE Network is more interesting as a possible trendsetter than even for a wrestling content. (But there again, that's something everyone following the Network announcement pointed out two months ago.)
The great thing about Shoemaker is his position might not exist without him and because it exists we get things like that long sit down interview with HHH from last year, a level of public access I haven't seen the Torch or Observer receive. It's ESPN, WWE's more interested in impressing them. The tradeoff is those that HHH interview had him making up stuff or getting confused or whatever, and Shoemaker not knowing/not caring/not doing a good enough job to notice it. Even as much as I disagree with Shoemaker's opinions at times - and his podcast can be more eyerolling than his columns, to be honest - I still kind of think it's better to just adjust your expectations and get out of what you can.
And, to my friends who gave up watching wrestling a decade ago but still keep in touch with it occasionally he's an entertaining guy who brings the up to speed on what's going on. They're smart enough to see thru silliness and don't really care what country Doug Furnas came from, so they're entertained and I'm happy for that.
(As much as I like Bix, 20-ish straight Twitter messages to people is the easiest way to get written off as a crank and a loon. You can be exactly right, but you've got to target a little better than that. And there's an unspoken history here - Bix has said HHH was headed to an interview with him for Bleacher Report when the ESPN guys grabbed him and got him to do their interview instead. He's not neutral here.)
I love the in-depth-ness of Cubs' post. I saw the article as one atrocious fluff piece, not even considering factual errors. The "Simmons Style" is in full effect here, and so blatantly lazy that I skimmed most of the article (but skimming counts for page views!). Just an awful, hackneyed piece of trash that was a Mad Lib with wrestling.
I really doubt Simmons has spent that much time with The Network, but I give him more of a pass than Shoemaker because he really is your casual wrestling fan.
I get most my wrestling info from here these days and a cubs post is a lot better read for me than a Shoemaker column. I think Shoemaker is sincere and his Dead Wrestler columns are still worthy, but I get nothing out of his Grantland stuff. I get he has a target audience, but his perspective doesn't match up with mine.
It's too bad neither were using the Xbox because WWE has a LONG way to go fixing that mess. I will give them credit though, this will be a game changer and will go a long way to restoring some of the images we have on other gambles Vince took and lost badly.
Thanks for the write-up, Cubs. I really appreciate it I guess I went into the original article expecting it to be an almost paid-advertisement (which it certainly reads like).
I knew something was bothering me about it, but I pretty much wrote off what I was reading as if it was Michael Cole telling me how great this next PPV was going to be.
I've read the odd Simmons piece and enjoyed it for a light read, but I'm not familiar with Shoemaker at all.
Originally posted by Tribal ProphetThanks for the write-up, Cubs. I really appreciate it I guess I went into the original article expecting it to be an almost paid-advertisement (which it certainly reads like).
I knew something was bothering me about it, but I pretty much wrote off what I was reading as if it was Michael Cole telling me how great this next PPV was going to be.
I've read the odd Simmons piece and enjoyed it for a light read, but I'm not familiar with Shoemaker at all.
I'm not sure what he was doing before that but those articles were what led him to the Grantland gig.
I started reading this column and finally gave up at: Q: For Shoemaker only — you wrote a gigantic wrestling book and know more about the history of this business than just about anyone. What does this channel do for that history?
That and Simmons' comment about how boring pro wrestling was before 1978 infuriated me for some reason.
I know that he was under contract with WCW for a few years and never used, up until Bischoff was ousted and that other dude (Bill Busch, Banks, Bellamy...someone help me out here) came in to try to fix the books and started making cuts.