The WWE Network: Can They Put It Together in 4 Months?

With this week's announcement about the WWE Network launching on April 1 of next year, far sooner than most expected, it must be a daunting time to work behind the scenes in the world's No.1 promotion. Many wrestling fans consider working for WWE a dream job of sorts, but for the folks in production and the office, this spring looks set to be full of long hours and extra hard work.

You see, these poor guys face an astonishing work load in the upcoming months as they rush to put everything in place before the official network unveiling—as well as all the usual stress and hassle of the busy WrestleMania period.

It does not help that when it comes to the network project, currently being overseen by WWE CFO Michelle Wilson, they are facing an uphill struggle.

The early launch is unwise for a variety of reasons, one of the main ones being that the company is not even remotely close to ready, a situation that echoes the doomed-to-fail XFL in 2001. The football league also spread WWE sources thin, as officials tried to balance their wrestling responsibilities with starting up the football league. As a result, the on-screen product suffered and a flawed XFL product was rushed out to audiences.

Indeed, Dave Meltzer couldn't help bringing up the comparison in this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter when assessing the chances of success for the WWE network before the company is ready: "The project is nowhere near ready to launch and the old proverb about television and first impressions is noted, with some harking back to the XFL and them putting the games on before they were ready and losing ground in a hurry from day one."

Bryan Alvarez of the F4W Newsletter also echoed these concerns, pointing to the fact that WWE are mere months away but are woefully unprepared:

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WWE doesn't have a network head, any upper-level staff, nor have they hired even close to the 200 people they'll need to staff their facility. It's said to be a panic situation inside WWE among those whose job it is to get this project ready by the now-official launch date, and many are concerned that if roles cannot be filled by new hires, they'll be filled by those already working for WWE—in other words, a massive increase in an already extremely stressful workload.

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The company may continue to struggle finding a head for the network, as it is greatly questionable whether any respectable television name is going to want to risk their reputation by being involved in a project that is in such disarray and has so many questions surrounding it.

There is also the issue of carriers. WWE's aim is to reach 40 million homes to start with, but the company has been quiet about just which cable companies they're expecting to carry the channel. In the Sports Business Daily article, Michelle Wilson would not go into any specifics about carriers or advertising, only vaguely mentioning WWE was in negotiations with various parties.

The content of the network is also up in the air, although it looks sightly more promising. A few weeks ago, WWE sent out a survey with a wide variety of possible production shows, including a diva's reality show, a program where Mick Foley goes to a different theme park every week, a weight gain contest with a WWE Superstar getting skinny guys into shape and a show with various WWE legends all sharing a house.

While the ideas were all intriguing, there was the question of just who would want to watch these once the novelty wore off. These shows will all cost a fair bit to make (editing, production values) and, really, who is actually going to watch Mick Foley go on roller-coaster rides for 22 weeks?

As it is, the only show that seems to have made the cut was Legend's House. Possibly because WWE realized most of the suggested programs were unworkable and/or had little appeal to mass audiences. The rest of the programming will presumably be made of WWE's extensive video library, the odd interactive show and WWE movies like 12 Rounds and The Chaperone.

Well, at least it will be cheap and they won't be splashing out on expensive original content that garners little in the way of viewership. Certainly, when it comes to wrestling footage, fans who have the channel should be satisfied (although they may want to skip all the showings of The Marine 2). So it has that going for it if nothing else.

But ultimately, many in the industry are not optimistic about the network's chances of success. Notably, former WWE writer and television industry insider Court Bauer, who expressed astonishment in a recent interview about how soon the WWE network was launching:

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I met with someone recently that works for a major partner of WWE's and they are just in disbelief and they don't believe it is going to be able to launch in April. It's gonna launch, Vince is adamant it's gonna launch, but they don't have a business plan. They don't have anything that details what this is going to be, they don't have a blueprint for how they're, again, going to monetize this, how they're going to make money, and I can tell you from talking to people that are involved with ad sales for Syfy, for example, WWE programming in 2012, Smackdown ad rates aren't looking good. What they're attracting in terms of ad partners, not hot, not good. So that's on Syfy, not a great network but still, Syfy. WWE, its own network, 24 hours of content, whether it's repeats and replays and so on, but still 24 hours a day, what do you think they're going to get? It's gonna be horrible! At the same time they're spending all this money, going deep into their cash reserves to try to enhance their production facilities, to add staffing to be able to facilitate this thing, it's a huge risk.

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Bauer also claimed WWE would likely be struggling to find anyone to carry the channel and repeated the report that Vince rushed out the channel because he felt sure that the UFC were going to try to put together a network of their own, and he wanted to jump the gun on them. (As it turns out, Dana White toyed with the idea of a network, but ultimately decided against it after the company got the Fox deal.)  

All things considered, this network looks like a disaster waiting to happen.  

Of course, workaholic Vince McMahon seems to thrive on pressure and he may see the network as his last great challenge before he retires and hands the company over to his daughter and son-in-law. If this is the case, Vince may want to make sure is he up to this challenge, because four months is a pretty short time to set up what is surely one of biggest projects he will ever undertake.

On paper, the chances of the network succeeding look bleak. But Vince has surprised us before. Maybe he will again.