Screwed by the Network/Professional Wrestling

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Examples of Professional Wrestling shows or promotions that were Screwed by the Network include:

  • Paramount attempted to screw WWE by moving WWE Smackdown into the famed Friday Night Death Slot (where it would face not only constant pre-emptions for local sports, but the loss of a good portion of its audience to people getting out and doing stuff on Friday nights), in order to try and pressure WWE into keeping Monday Night Raw on Spike TV. However, thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by WWE (even rebranding the show Friday Night SmackDown!), the show managed not only to not lose any viewers, but gained enough ground that it was one of the few UPN shows picked up by the post-merger CW.
    • They ultimately wound up screwing them anyway, but it took a few years; when it came time to renew contracts, CBS wasn't interested despite the high ratings. SmackDown moved to the much-less-notable My Network TV, and started beating The CW in ratings by a good margin.
      • Then it got screwed by Memphis and Des Moines when those cities decided to dump My Network TV after they went to a syndicated model in September 2009, however in both cases the CW affiliate picked SmackDown up for Saturday nights and pretty much got station upgrades otherwise. The rest of the My Network TV schedule was blissfully ignored by both of them.
    • Sadly, high ratings for wrestling mean NOTHING. Advertisers won't touch it (they believe that it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, and that the viewers won't buy products being advertised; the much-publicized switch to TV-PG doesn't change this), and the only real value is to pump up the network average for prime time. Since UPN and its successors-in-interest are already dead last, and WWE numbers are and were low enough by broadcast standards not to make any difference, they have no compunction about moving/canceling wrestling programming.
  • How about an entire company screwed by the network? In 2001, AOLTimeWarner was openly looking to sell World Championship Wrestling, producer of the highest-rated shows for TNT (WCW Nitro) and TBS (WCW Thunder). A group of investors, lead by WCW head booker Eric Bischoff, had a deal in principle to take over the company and absorb the production costs that the network had been covering. Jamie Kellner, then the Turner Networks CEO, decided to cancel all WCW programming from Turner networks (which he had wanted to do for years but had been blocked by his predecessor, network founder Ted Turner), removing WCW's most valuable assets and single-handedly torpedoing the deal. Vince McMahon (head of WCW's longtime rival World Wrestling Federation) then swooped in and bought out WCW's remaining assets (mostly wrestler contracts and its deep tape library) for pennies on the dollar.
    • WCW's not the only wrestling company to get screwed... take the case of Extreme Championship Wrestling's turbulent relationship with TNN. "You have to be an ECW fan to watch this show, because, God knows, the network has never put out one freaking commercial or one press release to let you know that we're here!"
      • Bear in mind, everything they aired was approved by TNN. Neither side saw the relationship as a long term deal; ECW was trying to build up its TV rep to get on a "real" cable network, and TNN (then a country music station) was just trying to get a piece of the wrestling boom.
    • Jamie Kellner is famous for two things—saying that Tivo was stealing from the networks, and canceling a long list of TV shows.
      • Kellner can hardly shoulder all of the blame here. WCW lost enormous amounts of money in its last two years (its losses for 2000 were estimated at $65 Million) and was drawing dismal ratings towards the end (TV ratings are wrestling's only saving grace; most advertisers won't touch wrestling, so instead it's used to pump up network averages to raise ad prices for other shows). Granted, Turner wasn't in a position to block the cancellation as he had several times in the past, due to the AOL Time Warner merger, but WCW was dying and Bischoff's pie-in-the-sky acquisition attempts would have at best kept it on the air another year.
  • Total Nonstop Action Wrestling Impact and TNA Reaction air on Bravo in the UK. That channel just got bought out by Sky, who are closing it down. As Sky already air WWE, no room for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling on their channels, so these two shows have been screwed into a No Export for You situation by the Sky network.
    • Actually, this is a major aversion. The TNA shows got moved to Challenge, which happened to launch on Freeview at the same time to replace the also closed down Channel One. So TNA went from subscription TV to free-to-air TV, which must've actually increased its audience.
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