Friday, January 2, 2015

Quick Review of WWE Network

I've been a WWE Network subscriber since the network launched. There has been plenty of good AND bad in the first 10+ months.

Good

Legends House. I had very low expectations for this Big Brother style reality show, featuring 8 old WWE superstars. I found the show extremely entertaining. Gene Okerlund, Pat Patterson, Roddy Piper and Tony Atlas were the stars that made the show fun to watch. There was supposed to be a second season but those plans have been put on hold. I realize WWE wants to keep costs as low as possible but I think it'd be smart to do another season with some more recent, bigger names. (Flair, Nash, Rhodes, DiBiase)

Monday Night War series. This is a slight thumbs up from me. The 20 part series was ambitious but started out with a few good shows. Unfortunately, a lot of the same material is being recycled on multiple episodes. Obviously there is a lot of Bischoff and since he's no longer with the company, most of his stuff is from 2002 and been seen plenty of times. There are a few episodes left to be aired but the series has lost a lot of momentum, in my eyes.

WWE Rivalries. This series just started about two months ago. Admittedly, I have only seen a few episodes. Old school fans would enjoy this series, although there appears to be a lot more recycled footage during these shows.

The Steve Austin/Vince McMahon podcast. I thought this was tremendous. Both guys were great, especially Austin. A monthly podcast like this on the Network would be great.

This Week in WWE. I have never watched this show but it's smart to have a weekly recap show of the current product.

Saturday Night's Main Event and Clash of the Champions. Big network shows where you got to see top names go against each other in an era where that rarely happened.

Legends of Wrestling. These roundtable discussions hosted by Jim Ross and Gene Okerlund are must watches for longtime fans. Getting to hear stories from behind the scenes from the guys that were there is pretty interesting.

The price. Have you heard? It's just $9.99! Ugh. But seriously, it really is tremendous value, even if the monthly ppvs are garbage, which they usually are. There is so much content, it's hard to complain about the price.

Reliability. After a few expected issues in the first month or so, the Network has had very few streaming problems. I watch the network on my ps3 and iphone and both have been great.

Bad

Adding old programming. As a wrestling fan who grew up in the mid 80's/90's, I was really looking forward to reliving some of the great moments from when I was a youngster. Unfortunately, the Network has been painfully slow adding old programming. WWF Superstars? Nothing. WCW Saturday Night? Nothing. That's not that bad. What is inexcusable, imo, is they aren't close to having every Raw and Nitro episode available. Every episode of Raw from 1993-March 1996 is available but that's not good enough. There are random episodes of more recent Raws but I think people like to watch them in order. The first two years of Nitro were added a few months ago but again, I believe they should all be up by now. ECW's weekly tv shows are available from 1993-March 1996. They have started adding Tuesday Night Titans (an awful talkshow from the early 80's hosted by Vince McMahon) and Primetime Wrestling. There are also 20 episodes of World Class Wrestling from the early 80's.

Lack of original content. I feel like there are options for them to do new shows but obviously WWE is not in money spending mode as of late.

Promoting the Network. As I noted earlier, I think the $9.99 price tag is more than fair. I really doubt that is what's holding back fans from subscribing. I think fans want content first and foremost...something that makes the WWE Universe feel like they're really missing out by not subscribing.

Overall. I give the WWE Network a B. They have done a lot right but there is plenty of room for improvement but they're gonna have to spend to make original programming.