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koilungfishAuthor - R.D. Reynolds & Bryan Alvarez
ISBN - 978-1-55022-661-4
"Although the Nitro featuring the Nash-Rey fiasco was better that the usual crapfest the show had become, WCW got destroyed in the ratings: 4.32 to Raw's 6.32."The Death of WCW is the latest volume in Project: Pro Wrestling, and the first not to be written by a wrestler. It is instead written by Mr Reynolds, who runs a website dedicated to all that is bad in pro wrestling, and Mr Alvarez, who runs a wrestling newsletter and radio show. The Death of WCW is supertitled as being presented by Mr Alvarez' newsletter and Mr Reynolds' website. The Death of WCW was added to Project: Pro Wrestling with the intent of seeing what the outsider with insider knowledge has to say on the world of the insider. What I got was mostly numbers.
The Death of WCW, after a quick introduction to the history of WCW [World Championship Wrestling, one of the biggest wrestling companies], proceeds to give a week-by-week blow-by-blow of the highlights and lowlights of WCW's television shows and occasional non-televised live events. Therein lies The Death of WCW's main problem: tunnel vision. Within a few pages of the first chapter the formula is set: a quick summary of the most notable events on the TV shows and a report on what the rating for show was, occasionally interleaved with Pay-Per-View buy rate or ticket sales. "Star ratings" for the quality of matches are mentioned occasionally, but as to who assigns these ratings and how biased or unbiased their criticism we are left entirely in the dark.
I can't explain what any of those things are, beyond the most obvious, nor can I interpret the data Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds present, because they don't explain it. "Ratings" are constantly referred to - 0.19, 2.35, 8.52, whatever - the only obvious fact is that bigger is better. However, exactly what these numbers mean is opaque. Does this represent, say, the percentage of monitored audience that were tuned to that particular show? Millions of viewers? Poking the internet with a Singapore cane leads me to understand that it is the former. However, at no point do Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds mention this, nor do they cover in any way whether or not the total audience size changed - a 5 rating with an audience of five million means the same number of viewers as a 2.5 with an audience of ten million - nor do they mention whether or not the number of channels was increasing or decreasing. In general, they do not work with the numbers beyond stating what they were, nor do they make any attempt to inform the reader as to the meaning and significance of these numbers. How did TV ratings make money for WCW? Were they dependant on advertising revenue? The main sources of income for wrestling seem to be PPV sales, merchandising and live event ticket sales. How the ratings affect these is not entirely clear.
Given The Death of WCW's focus on ratings as a meter for the quality of the show - indeed, the TV rating is treated as the absolute pinnacle of importance - it is reprehensible of the authors to not explain what the ratings mean, nor to explain whether or not the weekly rating is relevant. The number of viewers for a show, especially one that runs week after week, must fluctuate over time. Are show-by-show ratings actually relevant? Or does it require a month-by-month average to see the clearer picture? Does a poor rating one week mean that the show was bad, or that the show the week before was bad? This also is not mentioned.
There is also a suggestion of judicious editing. Frequently a show is described as "horrible" or "terrible" without reference to the all-important ratings. Could it be that the authors prefer not to contradict their qualitative judgement with the numbers they rely on? From page 150 through to page 158 a series of programs centred around painted lunatic The Ultimate Warrior are summarised for the reader's horror, but without ratings. The authors grudgingly admit "Short-term, though, Warrior was generating ratings". It looks suspiciously like Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds would rather not admit that shows they considered bad were well-received by the viewers. Later in the book, whilst attempting to put the boot in on Kevin Nash, the authors state more than once how terrible a particular show's 2.61 rating was. It seems as if there is an invisible formula: shows the authors liked that got good ratings and shows the authors hated that got bad ratings get their numbers shown. Otherwise the numbers are quietly hidden out the back.
Speaking of putting the boot in, Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds' main non-summary point is to assign blame for the failure of WCW as a company. They put all their forefingers to use and pick out announcer-turned-executive Eric Bischoff, wrestler-turned-actor-turned-wrestler-again Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bolea, wrestler-with-occasional-side-job-writing-scripts Kevin Nash and scriptwriter-turned-lunatic Vince Russo.
Once again the word "bias" clots in the glottis. Eric Bischoff, half-hidden behind pages of rating-laden summary, seems to be a relatively intelligent man who, though what appears to be a glitch in the Matrix, ended up in charge of the company, where he had several very good ideas. After that he either went mad from power or cracked under pressure, or both, and came out with many more increasingly bad ideas. Either his unqualified successes had led him to believe he could do little wrong or he was under sufficient stress that his internal quality control meter blew up. All in all Mr Bischoff comes across as someone who screwed up on many levels but at least was basically free of malice.
When it comes to Mr Bolea, Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds present plenty of incidents illustrating how he manipulated situations to his own advantage. Mr Bolea comes across as a canny politician who nonetheless couldn't see beyond the limits of his own ego. Mr Russo comes off even worse, since the authors list out his increasingly weird ideas and odd complaints. Whilst by the point of the book at which Mr Russo is first mentioned the reader may well be auto-compensating for the authors' apparent bias and selective presentation of data, it's hard to imagine what they could have left out that would've made Mr Russo look like he was sane.
Then there is the aforementioned Mr Nash. Mr Nash is described as "horrible" in most directions, and the casual reader would leave the book thinking that he was Mr Bolea Mk II. However, having noted the selective presentation of facts as pertains to the ratings data, one cannot help but notice that presentation of facts as pertains to Mr Nash is also strongly selective. When the authors set out to present Mr Russo's ideas as terrible, they show multiple examples. When they wish to present Mr Nash's ideas as terrible, they are rather quiet as to what exactly he was doing that was so bad. Perhaps the most telling example of bias here is the point at which Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds use Mr Bolea's universal unpopularity with his fellow wrestlers as scathing example of how bad a person he was ... and then use Mr Nash's universal popularity with the same fellow wrestlers as scathing example of how bad a person he was. In the same paragraph, no less.
By this point in reading The Death of WCW I had come to question the accuracy, or rather the fullness, of the authors' presentation of data, and since they seemed so keen to kick Mr Nash as often as possible yet showed the least evidence as to why they would want to, I went searching for further data. The most useful thing I found was a three-part series of articles defending Mr Nash from the very arguments presented.
Comparing the linked articles of Mr Prag there to the writings of Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds revealed three things in quick succession. Firstly, Mr Prag was capable of enough emotive remove to take a balanced view of things, such as being able to refer to Mr Nash as "mediocre to mildly successful" whilst writing as strong a defence of him as possible. Secondly, Mr Prag did not reference the sources for any of his data, calling his defence into question. I then checked the back of The Death of WCW and discovered that neither did Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds. That's right, over 330 pages of unexplained statistics, loaded statements and increasingly suspiciously presented anecdotal evidence, and the only referenced sources are to half a dozen direct quotes.
There is a strong suggestion that the lurkers support Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds by email.
The Death of WCW's presentation of the anecdotes used to enliven its course also shows that the authors do not particularly care to present matters in an unbiased fashion. At one point Messrs Alvarez and Reynolds describe how one wrestler, Juventud Guerrera, had a presumbly drug-induced fit in an Australian hotel. They then report that "WCW was so outraged by Juvie's behaviour that they promptly fired Scott Hall". They then explain that this is because a lawsuit involving Mr Hall had finished. Then, as an afterthought, they mention that Mr Guerrera was fired too.
This is the most blatant example of twisting the reader's perceptions. Wishing to portray WCW management as incompetent and incoherent, they present the data to suggest that Mr Hall's firing was a direct consequence of Mr Guerrera's misadventure. What a quiet moment of rational thought would suggest is that Mr Guerrera was fired as a direct consequence of his misadventure, and that Mr Hall was fired as a direct consequence of the lawsuit, and that the two dismissals are, in all probability, not the slightest bit connected. What reason do the authors have for presenting these two incidents as connected? I cannot think of one, save only that the authors have it in for both WCW management and Mr Hall, especially considering how they go out of their way to question his continued employment every time he is mentioned yet later state that he was more popular with the fans, who hadn't seen him in months, that just about any other WCW wrestler. Perhaps they should try connecting those statements in their heads.
Indeed, there is something about the quiet spite of the authors that seems familiar. This unsourced, perhaps unprofessional kick to the unprotected stomach of the absent accused is strongly reminiscent of an internet flamewar. Both authors are internet journalists and site contributors. They present strongly biased data here; they must, by inference, have been entangled with the emotive, illogical, vituperative arguments that thrive in the anonymity of the internet. Sadly, they seem to have brought that attitude to their book. Data is not explained. References are absent. With such evidence of intent to present certain people and aspects of events as malicious, incompetent and/or reprehensible, one can do nothing but ask how many of the anecdotes in The Death of WCW are actually true? How many are repetition-exaggerated or garbled versions of the truth? How many never happened at all?
All in all, The Death of WCW is a quick-reading, easy to pick up, cleanly presented mass of summarised TV shows, unexplained data, anecdotes of uncertain veracity, biased reporting and attempted character assassination. By all means read it, since it makes entertaining reading, but do not under any circumstances believe a word.
This book is:
* - fast, easy summarisations of crazy situations
* - Messers Alvarez and Reynolds putting the boot in on those they blame for the downfall of a company they loved
* - as biased as two donkeys
This book is not:
* - going to explain its data
* - going to reveal its sources
* - going to give the reader a remotely balanced view of anything
