WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his Wise Choices podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including why he believes AEW is not doing a good job of building their fanbase.
Bischoff said, “One of my common issues and critiques that are derived from them is that AEW is doing absolutely no favors to themselves in terms of growing their audience. If you’re in the television business, if you’re a television producer — and that’s all that Tony Khan is. And by that I mean, you know, there’s a lot of really, really successful people in Hollywood that are producers. So I’m not minimizing a role as a producer. But it’s nothing more complicated than that, folks. Tony Khan is producing television in exchange for a license fee. And at the core of that business is the pressure that’s on you to grow your audience. If you’re not growing in television, you’re dying. And losing audience week after week after week after week over a consistent period of time is not a good sign.”
“Now, why do I bring that up, because I’ve talked about it before, and over and over and over again? I’m bringing it up because essentially, I’m coming into the show today with you as a new viewer who hasn’t been following for weeks and weeks and weeks. Who doesn’t live on the internet and follow every comment and question and all that. I’m coming at this, as I did last night, with an opinion. I’m not going to suggest that I don’t have one, or there’s not some bias in my perspective as a result of that. But from a storytelling perspective, I’m coming into this like a brand new viewer. And that’s one of the reasons why I harp on this stuff, is because you have to not only serve the audience you already have; you also have to serve new viewers. Because the way you grow your audience is by getting people who don’t normally watch to watch. And you have to engage that audience as well.”
On AEW catering to the hardcore fans:
“Right now AEW has been, for the last five years I’ve been watching them, going too far satisfying an existing audience. Or you could call it preaching to the choir. Take your pick, it’s the same thing. And when your focus is on serving your existing audience exclusively and not paying attention to the things you need to be aware of in order to grow your audience, you’re going to slowly lose your audience. You’re not going to grow. If you’re lucky, you will maintain your audience. Generally, what you’ll end up doing is losing audience. And that’s where AEW is and has been for a long time. So that’s why when I comment on anything creative that I see, any elements of the story that I see, I’m coming at it from the perspective of a brand new viewer.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
