Unless you’ve been under a rock, I’m sure you’ve heard about the long awaited unveiling of WWE’s very own network. Being a fan of wrestling myself, I had heard murmurs of the network many moons ago, and then those whispers died out. I assumed it was because Vince couldn’t find the content schedule to cover a days worth of programming that everyone would want to see. I assumed he didn’t get the deals he wanted with the cable providers. But what I didn’t assume was that Vince might’ve had a product altering epiphany. See most executives knee deep in development and cost would’ve forged ahead and haphazardly released a work in progress on a medium that’s in the process of dying. Vince has been categorized as many things, maniacal to underhanded, and some of that is true, but what can’t be denied is his vision. Even in his failures he succeeds. For anyone who now debates whether the home viewing experience of the NFL is actually better than going to a stadium, you can thank the Boss of bosses for that, as his flash in the pan (I still argue there’s a place for this league if he brings it back) XFL was the first league to utilitize the sky cam which helped create the most immerse viewing experience the sport had ever seen.
Well Vince is at it again. The industry he helped make mainstream is altering yet another medium. Television. Cable providers are the bane of many people’s existence, usually coming in second to only cell phone carriers as the worst industry in America. Cable companies love to give you junk you don’t want and charge you more for it, cause it’s tied to the few things you gotta have. You want ESPN you gotta also pay to get the hunting channel. This model of business is terribly inefficient but due to the allowable monopoly setup that cable exists in, there’s no real reason to change it. But since the dawn of Netflix, cable’s model of business has been running on life support. It is doomed to fail, which will leave a void rather large that will need filling. Ala carte television is the future, but no one really knew how it would work. Well now we do. The WWE network is establishing the norm for what we can expect from networks. It is the first network that’s explicitly internet based and completely circumvents the big machine of cable companies, allowing customers to directly subscribe to their product without needing permission from their local cable provider. Now some have griped that ten dollars for a channel is a bit much, but in this particular case, that includes monthly pay-per-views that normally cost about sixty dollars. So will ESPN cost ten bucks a month when it gets released. The short answer is no, the longer answer is, if it does, they’re definitely ripping off their customers. The WWE network brings a slew of new original content that can be watched live or on replay, and a library of all their historical content. There’s endless amounts of viewing content for anyone who gets it, and its available on all devices. This my friends is the future. This is McMahon’s legacy.
About Matt Cargile
Matt Cargile is the Editor in Chief of rookerville.com. He also works in finance, but refuses to read any news printed on pink paper. He is a child at heart with adult means. His childhood dream was to either become a magician or the leader of the next great empire and somehow both these things make complete sense. He's contradictory in nature, but is always consistent.
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