The Hamilton Ave Journal 11.17.07: Volume 1 – Issue 8

And where is Hamilton Ave? That is the location of the WWE Production Studio in Stamford, CT, and thus the most powerful place in the wrestling world. Besides, The East Main Street Journal just does not have the right ring to it.

Who am I? I am JP Prag: consultant, entrepreneur, businessman, journalist, and wrestling fan.

Now, ring the bell because the market is open.

Lead Story: Major News Outlet Embarrassed by Men in Tights
As reported first in the Journal last week, CNN was embarrassed this week when the WWE posted side-by-side videos of the edited version of John Cena’s comments and the unedited version. In the documentary entitled “Death Grip: Inside Pro-wrestling”, CNN heavily edited Cena’s response to a question about whether he has done steroids. In the unedited version, Cena flat out denies the allegation and then goes into a two minute speech explaining how people will not believe him anyway. In the edited version, Cena implicated himself and dares anyone to prove he has.

In a rare twist of fate, the WWE has actually come out as the heroes in this situation as CNN looks manipulative and conniving. Although CNN has not responded to John Cena’s demand for a public apology, they have done two things to show their fault.

First, during the replays of the documentary, CNN put back in Cena’s original comments “due to certain complaints”. Then, on Wednesday, CNN released the following statement:

CNN felt that Mr. Cena’s statement in the interview:

was a more expansive and complete answer — and that’s why we used it in the first run of the program. And we stand by that decision. But, we added the other quote on the Sunday replay where Mr. Cena first denied using steroids. We did this because of his complaint and the attention it received so that viewers could see how he said it both times.

As noted in many sources—including highly trafficked pop-culture site TMZ.com—this is far from an apology and only makes CNN look worse.

CNN has fallen on hard times in recent years, losing ratings to Fox News and other news source providers (mostly via the Internet). CNN is a child of corporate parent Time Warner; and Time Warner is the renaming of merger disaster AOL-Time Warner.

As wrestling fans may note, it was the merger of AOL and Time Warner that led to the cancellation of all WCW programming, the backing out of Fusient Media Ventures from purchasing the company, and the eventual burying of the brand by the WWE. Although classified as a “merger”, it was really AOL with its large cash reserves that bought Time Warner.

Suddenly, executives who had only dealt with an internet business that derived money from members and advertisements were put in a creative and programming role; a role they were not qualified to fill. All Time Warner networks began a ratings slip that has only begun to be reversed. Still, there are many people within the organization who did not create, build, or even work with channels like TNT, TBS, or CNN, yet continue to have strong control over the content that is shown.

It is situations like that that have led to CNN being more willing to do sensationalized news stories and blatant disregard for personal welfare. The situation and many of the people that led to the death of WCW are still inside of Time Warner corporate causing the same problems today. This documentary by CNN can be seen as just an extension of the attitudes that cancelled WCW in 2001, despite the fact that WCW remained the top rated programs on all Time Warner networks, nonetheless always in the top 15 programs in all of cable.

There is an attitude against wrestling in Time Warner corporate by these people who do not see a consequence for their actions. The WWE has a powerful case here, and CNN has only made the situation worse with their arrogance. There are too many other situations that have been seen over the years, and CNN could be in for a rocky ride should the WWE decide to pursue this situation further.

A Continual Look at HR in the WWE : Part 5
In the continuing series of pieces exploring human resources in the WWE, an interesting bit of news surfaced this week. During the ECW tapings on Tuesday night, John Morrison and The Miz were on commentary and distracted from the match going on in the ring. Several times during the match Joey Styles and Tazz audibly chastised the two and tried to get them to concentrate on the match at hand. Staying in character and flying without a net, the two bickered back and forth, often talking over one another and the other announcers.

After the show, SmackDown! color commentator JBL came over to the two, verbally criticized them in front of their peers, and demanded they apologize to CM Punk and Jamie Noble for making them look bad. The Miz complied, but John Morrison said he would apologize but not because JBL told him to. This led to another argument between the two, Morrison allegedly pushing JBL, and a shoving match that was eventually broken apart by management.

This story is another example of how the WWE has no control over their culture or human capital. JBL comes from an old school mentality where wrestlers would routinely put each other on trial and locker room leaders would dish out punishment. In the days of loose confederations and territories, this made sense to keep order since there was no central governing authority.

In 2007, that is not the case. The WWE is a $250+ million company with nearly 600 employees. Yet despite this, the WWE continues to have little control over employee behavior in the workplace. People like JBL, whether correct or incorrect in their beliefs and civisms, are running rough shot over the rest of the locker room. That is not JBL’s role, yet he will not be punished for it. Instead, a message will be sent to the other employees that management does not care about their wishes and leaves the locker too to its own devices.

Again, this is one of the many factors that goes through an employees head whether they want to stay with the WWE, especially the younger prospects just coming up through the development system. When they see this type of behavior, they may decide to leave the company or the industry all together.

Recently, Vince McMahon was reported to have dressed down Shawn Michaels in front of the entire team, and Shawn immediately fired back and threatened to leave the company if he was ever spoken to that way again. It is a normal HR practice that if you need to criticize employees, it must be done in private. Yet the WWE either through direct action or complete inaction has allowed public humiliation to occur on too many occasions.

Some may say that is the price you have to pay for being in the business. But if a talent becomes so demoralized that they decide to leave, has anything been gained? Every development talent lost is money wasted in the system. Every high level superstar that decides not to sign a new contract is lost opportunity.

The WWE refuses to look at their own human capital issues and continue to blame the individual talent. When they do that, they sent a clear message to the remaining talent that the talent does not matter in the long run. And how is the talent supposed to react to a message like that?

As with stocks, here in the Journal we track the progress of television ratings. If ratings are the barometer by which we judge the product, then over the course of 52 weeks we should be able to see patterns, trends, and anomalies. Please note that gaps in the chart below are due to data not being released/available.

For the week ending Thursday November 15 2007, here are the current standings of our shows:

RAW
Close (This Week’s Rating): 3.5
Open (Last Week’s Rating): 3.8
Percentage Change: ▼ 6.7%
52-Week High: 4.3
52-Week Low: 2.5
All Time High: 8.1
All Time Low: 1.8

SmackDown!*
Close (This Week’s Rating): 2.9
Open (Last Week’s Rating): 2.8
Percentage Change: ▲ 3.6%
52-Week High: 3.3
52-Week Low: 2.2
All Time High: 5.8
All Time Low: 1.0

What are the top ten selling items for the WWE? From WWEShopZone.com:

1. WWE Action Trading Cards
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin Jakks Exclusive Action Figure
3. Triple H The Conqueror T-Shirt
4. Stone Cold Steve Austin Destroyed That T-Shirt
5. WWE Superstars 2007 Ornament
6. John Cena My Life DVD
7. WWE Black Gift Bag
8. WWE Topps Dog Tags
9. Triple H Grey Skull T-shirt
10. WWE Holiday Gift Wrap

Interestingly enough, Rey Mysterio’s DVD did not make this list even though he tops the Sports/Recreation Top Ten List. The time that these lists are compiled has a great impact on the results as the DVD list is most likely a week to two weeks out of the date by the time it is published. On the current WWE list, a retired wrestler has two items and an injured wrestler has one while everything else is holiday or Triple H related. Where is the rest of the roster represented on this list? Once again, this does not bode well for the WWE’s holiday season.

TNA requires a little bit more research. Their website does not release Top Ten lists, so the Journal does a general search for a space on “featured products” and sorts by most popular. They came up in order as:

1. MMG T-shirt
2. To Live and Die LAX T-shirt
3. Instant Classic: The Best of Christian Cage DVD
4. Hard Justice 2007 DVD
5. xXx T-shirt
6. University of Angle T-shirt
7. Pacman Jones T-Shirt
8. Sting Icon Baseball Cap
9. Samoa Joe Tiki Baseball Cap
10. TNA Christmas Ornament

Now this is a very interesting list. Before we were seeing TNA dominated by events, but now the list is dominated by different individuals. More-so, this list shows how popular and diverse the tag team division is in TNA. In a rare switch of events, TNA is better positioned for the holidays with a diverse showing among many stars than the WWE is. The Paman Jones T-shirt remains a mystery as it is selling at full price.

Do you know a wrestling event coming up? Send one in to The Hamilton Ave Journal and we’ll be sure to add it to the list.

Writing in this week we have Lynx Raven Raide with:

This little piece of feedback is in relation to the CNN documentry. I am wondering if Vince deliberately agreed to do the interviews in order to perhaps try and catch them out. There was one ABC Interview going back when Foley was still in WWE, where they showed him some tame backyard footage and asked his opinions, then showed him the bad footage, then when they presented it they put the bad footage first and then his response to the tame on. I can’t remember if WWE had cameras watching the interview that time (can’t find my Foley book to check) but they probably deliberately did this time around, not only to save their own ass but also maybe try and catch CNN out.

It would not be a surprising tactic and it worked like a charm. Any legitimate point that documentary had has not been washed away. Also, the spotlight is off of the WWE and on CNN now, something the WWE has wanted for a long time. It looks like we are past all the major inquiries and Congressional investigations, so expect things to turn back to the status quo in short order.

Also worth your read this week is: