Question to Mod Makers: How Do You Handle Early Wrestling TV?

[TeemuFoundation]

This is something I was wondering today. Those of you who make mods, how do you handle wrestling TV shows that were, say, pre-1997? Or pre-Nitro. I mean the TV shows like Superstars and Primetime Wrestling that were syndicated, before the era where RAW and Nitro made TV a major focus for a wrestling company. Prior to this era, TV shows were syndicated and were mainly used to promote the house show business. Very rarely did anything of note take place on free TV.

 

How do you guys simulate this? Do you have the companies have all of their B and C highlight shows operational, do you cherry pick? What's your approach? I'm asking because TEW isn't fully equipped with handling TV of this era, so you kinda need to have a workaround of some sort.

[d12345]

Hey Teemu! A few things here. TV was a big deal going back to the 80s for regional promotions. Raw started in 93 or 94 ish IIRC.

 

A way to simulate nothing of note happening on a TV show would be making it so a company only has B-shows.

[TeemuFoundation]

Yes, I know that TV was a big deal.

I should rephrase what I meant. TV wasn't quite the anchor it is in today's wrestling. Back in the day, TV shows were comprised by highlights from house shows taped all over the world. Accompanied by pre-taped interviews and promos. In TEW, highlight shows are only available for touring companies.

 

The current TV formula was really started by Nitro in late 95, and WWF followed with RAW around February 1997 - though RAW was slowly becoming a more important show from 1995, through 1996. But early 1997 is when the current RAW formula for the WWE was born.

[spiffyone]

Yes, I know that TV was a big deal.

I should rephrase what I meant. TV wasn't quite the anchor it is in today's wrestling. Back in the day, TV shows were comprised by highlights from house shows taped all over the world. Accompanied by pre-taped interviews and promos. In TEW, highlight shows are only available for touring companies.

 

Eh...that's not entirely correct. At least not for the '80s and early '90s.

 

While there were highlight shows, the syndicated shows of the promotions back in the day weren't typically highlight shows. The highlight shows, for the most part, aired on cable.

 

For example, neither the A and B WWF shows at the time (WWF Superstars of Wrestling, which you mentioned, and WWF Wrestling Challenge) were highlight shows. They were taped in a single arena which changed week to week (as the shows were on the loop), and did indeed feature angles - sometimes major angles at that. Hell, just about the entire card for WrestleMania III was built up on Superstars and, to a lesser extent, Challenge (it was the B show, after all), from the "Steamboat got his larynx crushed by Randy Savage" angle to the build up to Andre vs. Hogan.

 

The highlight shows for WWF were both on USA Network: Prime Time Wrestling and All-American Wrestling. The cable shows back in those days, with few exceptions, were actually less important than the syndicated shows because syndication was much wider reaching (loads of folks didn't have cable). And that's setting aside that Prime Time itself was essentially a highlight show of matches that aired live (or live to tape) as monthly specials on regional sports channels (MSG Network aired WWF cards every other month, as did PRISM in Philly, NESN in Boston, and later on, The Z Channel in Los Angeles).

 

The two exceptions to that rule were Crockett Promotions' World Championship Wrestling on TBS (the Saturday 6:05 show that later became WCW Saturday Night) and AWA Championship Wrestling on ESPN. But with the former, there were caveats: NWA Pro and World Wide Wrestling (the two syndicated JCP/NWA shows taped on the road) were where the big angles happened, with the TBS show mainly having highlights of the angles from those shows with original matches taped at the studio. But sometimes the TBS show was where big parts of angles originated in the latter '80s, and that became more pronounced after Turner bought the promotion (when the TBS show absolutely became the A show). With AWA, it was a matter of them losing so much of their syndication to Vince that only the ESPN show was on a truly national level.

 

As for interviews: some were "pre-taped" (that is, taped away from the audience on another set), but some were shot live to tape in front of that audience (because, really, none of the shows were live).

 

As for approach to TV for mods of previous era: while not a mod maker, I do often find myself editing and adding to mods myself for personal use. What I tend to do is set up what were the A and B shows in "real life" (or what passes for it) as the A and B shows in the game, and essentially give up on the idea of highlight shows/C shows because those aren't really possible as of yet in TEW outside of touring promotions (and even then, those shows can't be named/titled for some reason which I've never understood). If I'm really hankering for what were the highlight/C shows in reality to be there, I just change them to non-highlight B shows but show more some more "highlights" (via the highlight angle) than I would on the other shows. So, for example, in my edit of a 1987 mod, I've got WWF Superstars of Wrestling as the A show airing in syndication, WWF Wrestling Challenge as the B show in syndication, and changed WWF Prime Time Wrestling from a highlight show into a full B show with it's own matches (the idea being that USA Network forced the change on WWF) and show some highlights of angles that "aired" on Superstars and/or Challenge.

 

Of course, the problem there is that B shows don't really move the needle on popularity, but that's okay because, again, cable had far less viewers at the time compared to syndication anyway.

[spiffyone]

I should also mention:

 

House shows were indeed a much bigger deal in those eras, and the TV shows were indeed used to advertise those house shows (and later on the big Closed Circuit and PPV shows). Since we can't book house shows, per se, in the current TEW games, the workaround I use is to set up weekly or monthly non-televised "house show" events and use the TV shows to "advertise" those.

 

Such a workaround worked better in previous TEW games before 2016, IMO, as I would then pre-book the cards either as the currently airing shows were being graded/reviewed or right after the shows. I did this because advanced booking in the older TEW games worked as actual advertising for future shows in-game, so if you booked a match in advance that was coming off a hot angle it would spark higher ticket sales. That doesn't happen in TEW 2016, to my knowledge (I could be wrong), so I just kinda "imagine" it does.

[awesomenessofme1]

I should also mention:

 

House shows were indeed a much bigger deal in those eras, and the TV shows were indeed used to advertise those house shows (and later on the big Closed Circuit and PPV shows). Since we can't book house shows, per se, in the current TEW games, the workaround I use is to set up weekly or monthly non-televised "house show" events and use the TV shows to "advertise" those.

 

Such a workaround worked better in previous TEW games before 2016, IMO, as I would then pre-book the cards either as the currently airing shows were being graded/reviewed or right after the shows. I did this because advanced booking in the older TEW games worked as actual advertising for future shows in-game, so if you booked a match in advance that was coming off a hot angle it would spark higher ticket sales. That doesn't happen in TEW 2016, to my knowledge (I could be wrong), so I just kinda "imagine" it does.

 

From what I understand (wasn't around here at the time), the general player opinion was that required pre-booking just made things more annoying without adding much, so 2016 operated under the assumption that you'd advertised your matches the best they could. 2020 is adding in two different options related to pre-booking, though.