Eric Bischoff gave his thoughts on various topics on the latest episode of his Strictly Business podcast.
During it, Bischoff talked about AEW Collision’s ratings on September 2 against WWE Payback and college football being down, something expected due to the strong competition.
“I think people are making too big [of a deal about it]. Granted, when Tony [Khan] came out and made the [CM Punk firing] announcement, they lost 89,000 people. And that’s that’s significant. But I’d like to know what the lead is before you just jump to the conclusion that 89,000 people left because they saw him. Exactly. I think that’s a giant leap into fantasy land. I agree. We know that that number is accurate, but. It could have been for other reasons. It had nothing to do with CM Punk. What was the lead-in for that show? That’s the first thing I would want to know if I was analyzing and trying to figure out, okay, what went wrong? Why do we take this big hit? The first thing I’d want to know is what was the audience for the show that led into me? That’s important because depending on what that show was, you can expect a significant drop off when you shift from, let’s say, a sitcom or a movie to a wrestling show. It just is.
They’re not necessarily going to be the same audience. An audience isn’t necessarily going to hang around. You kind of hope they do. And that’s the goal. But often they don’t. So I would want to know what the lead-in was. I don’t, so I can’t comment on it. And I think there was and I talked about this, I think with you, or it might have been with Conrad, I think there was a fair amount of curiosity. What is Tony going to do? People who might not watch Collision anyway or otherwise decided to tune in just to get a real-time update on what the situation was because it got a lot of press. And I don’t think anybody that was, I won’t say hardcore, but I am an active and excited wrestling fan. Everybody knew that this was a possibility and there may have been some tune-in just to find out. But I don’t think that that number of 345,000 is that bad a number in the context of everything else. I agree. I predicted it months ago when you and I were talking about where even right after the show started, it opened up with 800,000. Now it’s pre-Punk firing right before Punk got let go. Before any of the drama, it was bouncing around 4 or 500,000 viewers.
So it wasn’t like it was setting the world on fire to begin with. And we all knew that when college football became a thing, that it was going to take another big hit. And I think I predicted that you’re going to see Collision live in that low threes mid-three category. And I don’t think Punk leaving had anything to do with it. I really don’t. And people will listen to this and they go, Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about know, to come up with their bulls**t social media analysis, which I’ve been reading a lot of lately, and it’s fascinating how f**king stupid most people are that engage in that kind of rhetoric on social media. They’re just completely, I mean, wack, but. I just don’t think Punk’s departure. Ultimately we’ll have as much of an impact on Collision. As people think it did. Because it didn’t have a positive impact on the show to begin with. What impact did Punk have on Dynamite? It was a big deal when he first showed up and then it leveled down to where it was before. He wasn’t as big of a draw as people think he is or thought he was. So I think this look, college football is going to kick their ass. It is what it is. You got Texas and Alabama coming up this Saturday. Are you kidding me? And again. I think I predicted this, but just really to check myself. I’ll go on a line and say expect a 3 to 5% decrease in this week’s number compared to last week’s number. Now, last week they were up not only against college football, opening college football. They’re also up against the WWE Premium live event.
That’s a doubleheader. I think they did actually pretty well, considering college football and WWE. Now, they’re not going to have a WWE live event that they’re competing with this time, but they’re going to be competing with some powerhouse football that anybody that’s remotely interested in college football, including me, by the way, I will be watching Conrad Thompson. And actually his dad, Larry, really converted me into an Alabama fan. And now I’m going to be watching. I probably otherwise would not have. But a lot of people are going to be watching that game. And I think it’s going to take a bigger bump this week than it ever did last week. Even though it doesn’t have WWE to compete with.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit the Strictly Business with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.
