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Pop President Brad Schwartz discusses TNA Impact Wrestling

2K views 23 replies 20 participants last post by  TNA is Here 
#1 ·
Brad Schwartz, the president of Pop, discusses the acquisition of TNA Impact Wrestling to Pop, formerly TV Guide Channel.

?Dixie and the Impact team were looking for a new home for their series,? said Schwartz during a recent phone interview. ?They had huge success on Spike. Millions of viewers watching every week, and they really enjoyed that success.

?In switching to another network [Destination America] which didn?t have the distribution that Spike had, they obviously noticed a little bit of a hit to the success that they had.?

In the United States, Spike?s reach is approximately 90 million homes.


Destination America about 60 million.

Pop is about 80 million.

Schwartz continued: ?So [TNA was] actively looking for a new television partner, and I think made the rounds and met with a lot of cable networks to see where a home might be.

?We were on their list of calls, and they came in [about a couple of months ago], and we had our entire team meet with them and listen to the pitch and listen to what they wanted to do -- where they saw the company going, where they saw [pro wrestling] going. That?s how it came to our attention.


?We had a lot of people in that meeting -- our marketing team, our programming team, our communications team, our research team. We really wanted everybody to hear it. We even had representatives from CBS and Lionsgate in that meeting, so everybody could hear it firsthand.?

Pop is a joint venture of CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS) and Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF). The partnership combines CBS?s programming, production and marketing assets with Lionsgate?s resources in motion pictures, television and digitally delivered content.

Meeting with Pop, CBS and Lionsgate execs and personnel, Carter and crew made a big impression.

?I would say the next day we [Pop, CBS, Lionsgate] were all like, ?We got to do this,?? Schwartz said. ?I?m not spinning this in any way. It?s the truth. When we knew this meeting was happening, there were people like me. I grew up watching wrestling, and I remember going to WrestleMania, and I had my own wrestling name, when I was younger, when we joked around in the basement.?


Schwartz then chuckled, when asked to divulge the name, and declined further comment on it, reverting to his original commentary.

?To my point, half the people [from Pop, CBS, Lionsgate] who walked into the meeting knew about wrestling and grew up with it or had some sort of relationship with it, and I think maybe half the room walked in a little skeptical of wrestling.?

The turning point.

?Dixie is so impressive, and she?s such an amazing spirit with a good, positive energy to her,? Schwartz said. ?By the end of the meeting, she had won everyone in the room over, and the next day it was unanimous, ?Let?s do this.?

?Then, it was a matter of can we get it??

Pop got it.

?This goes back to the brand direction that we want to have,? Schwartz said. ?When CBS bought the other half of this network and created a joint venture with Lionsgate, and then they hired me to run it, we knew we needed to re-brand the business and create something that was differentiated and fresh and new.

?Whew we did all our research about how to create a brand that felt different than any other brand that was out there but stay in the pop culture space, what came screaming out of all the research was this emotion of fandom. Fans today don?t sit on the outskirts of pop culture, poking fun at it. They live right in the middle of it, and they love it, and there?s an enthusiasm there, and there?s a spirit there and an optimism there. If you can bottle that up and create a media brand out of it, you would have something that?s very different than other pop culture brands -- that might look at things a little snarkily or look at things more from an affluent perspective or an urban perspective or a paparazzi perspective. That was a fresh perspective to look at the world.

?And then you ask yourself, ?Does it work?? Well, I think Ellen [DeGeneres] is very much like that. She kind of looks at the world like a fan, and I think Jimmy Fallon is very much like that. He looks at the world like a fan. So we knew that there was something going on in culture about his fandom. Coachella is so big it went to two weekends.?

The Coachella Valley Music and Festival is an annual music and arts festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., in the Coachella Valley.

Schwartz continued: ?Comic-Con has never been bigger. There are shows on TV like ?Talking Dead? that do nothing but talk about another show. We live in this world now that is connected through social media, that people are connected to other people with shared passions, whether you know them or not.

?One of our taglines here is that we?re fans, too, and so what came clearly across in the [TNA] presentation -- to bring this full circle -- is that wrestling fans are just some of the most passionate of anything. I remember being that way myself, when I was very much into wrestling. In some ways, when you see the crowd shots at a wrestling show, that was a bigger selling point to us than the ring shots.?

At wrestling shows, fans cheer, boo, chant, yell, stand, make signs and dress the part.

Schwartz said: ?Whether it?s Coachella or whether it?s Comic-Con or whether it?s the New Kids on the Block or whether it?s ?Walking Dead,? if we?re going to be a channel for fans, why can?t these amazing wrestling fans fit into that circle.?

Wrestling fans are fanatical, passionate and very active on social media, and that pleases Pop.

?Our Pop TV trended for 12 hours on Twitter just based on our press release [announcing TNA on Pop],? Schwartz said. ?There?s not even with any [TNA] content on the [Pop] air, yet, but when we announced this partnership, we trended nationally on Twitter for that many hours. It just kind of proved every reason why we did this. We celebrate fans. We celebrate their passions, and we cheer for their passions, and wrestling fans are pretty passionate.?

That is very true. They will let you know how they feel -- sometimes good and sometimes not so.

?We have a term that we actually registered for the audience that we?re targeting that we call the modern grown-ups,? Schwartz said. ?It?s not really so much a demographic as it is a pyschographic. It?s people who live with emotion of youth. They want to stay connected with their emotion of youth...the heart of a fan. That emotion that comes with it. It?s not so much people in their 40s, people in their 30s, people in their 20s. It?s do you have that fandom personality, that thing that keeps you connected to the emotion of youth.?
Source: Miami Herald
 
#6 ·
Of course the one story on this site with actual information from a real source is crapped on. When newz from guess sites are taken as gospel. It shows what this site is all about.

Good info in there as to TNA starting talking to them a few months back and Dixie being the big thing in POP buying in. Dixie keeps TNA going. I know that make most of you sad but TNA is on TV whereas so few wrestling companies are. Thats a big deal imo.

I'll get trashed for being positive about TNA since you can't do that here but I feel pretty good about where TNA is at. I'm not really worried about the posponment of the India tour as they will do it in 2016. 2016 is going to be fun for actual TNA fans not the LOLTNA crowd.
 
#11 ·
Admittedly. Poptv is more accessible on my cable system, but it doesnt matter to me because i download the episodes and watch them later. When I first saw this thread, All I could read was Pop President Brad and my mind instantly thought TNA was doing an angle with Brad Maddox. lolTNA Obviously not, but what a strange thought that was. We'll see how the Poptv Network feels about TNA in a few months time.
 
#15 · (Edited)
Brad's relationship with TNA has just started and he is already made a mistake. He said good things about TNA. Shame shame.

I love how people claim Dixie is a clueless twat then say somehow she pulled the wool over the eyes of execs from Pop, CBS and Lionsgate. I mean if she can do that with how "dumb" she is they must be even more dumb than her.

Of course time will tell if this will work out. But for those looking for hope I see a few things that put Pop ahead of DA. You have an executive that not only thinks positive about wrestling but is a fan. You have a company/network that is being built around pop culture and social media which should be a better fit for TNA than one that is built around the quirkiness of Americana.

I just hope that TNA finally has a vision for their company that is good and unique. And that Pop, and hopefully CBS and Lionsgate, are dedicated to help them reach their goal.
 
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#4 ·
?We have a term that we actually registered for the audience that we?re targeting that we call the modern grown-ups,? Schwartz said. ?It?s not really so much a demographic as it is a pyschographic. It?s people who live with emotion of youth. They want to stay connected with their emotion of youth...the heart of a fan. That emotion that comes with it. It?s not so much people in their 40s, people in their 30s, people in their 20s. It?s do you have that fandom personality, that thing that keeps you connected to the emotion of youth.?
I think the term he was looking for was "manbabies"
 
#10 ·
Pop is clearly expecting "millions" of fans and have been sold the story of "DA was a bad fit for us. Most of our fans don't get the channel"

6 months down the track when Pop isn't getting the desired numbers that TNA had offered they'll be kicked off much like DA kicked them off for the same reason.
 
#20 ·
POP is expecting a million plus fans to tune in every week so it'll drive up average viewership for the network.

I think they're in a bit of a surprise come January. I think they'll do better numbers than they have for DA (Simply due to it being available in more homes) but if they get into another slump where they tape 5 MONTHS of tv in a week, people are going to lose interest again really quickly.
 
#24 ·
If they had representatives from CBS and Lionsgate in that meeting, I hope that TNA somehow maybe suggested them to branch out and turn Pop TV into a network for Men with interesting content.
 
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