V. McMahon
NEW YORK -- Vince McMahon's high-rated primetime Monday-night wrestling extravaganza "Raw" is coming back to the USA Network after a five-year run on Viacom's Spike TV.
World Wrestling Entertainment will pocket about $30 million a year from the three-year deal with NBC Universal, which owns USA. NBC U Television Group prexy Jeff Zucker called "Raw" one of the hottest shows on cable, confirming NBC Universal will lavish $8 million on a promotional campaign alerting USA viewers to the return of "Raw" at the completion of its Spike run in October.
"The campaign will brand wrestling as integral to the fabric of USA, as important as the U.S. Olympics team and series such as 'Monk,' 'Kojak,' 'The 4400' and 'The Dead Zone,' " Zucker said.
Linda McMahon, CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, said NBC U offered a better overall deal than Spike TV, even though WWE will leave $13 million a year on the table starting in October.
According to an 8-K filing with the SEC, WWE has been collecting that $13 million a year on Spike as net profit from the advertising revenues it pockets by selling about two-thirds of the advertising in "Raw" and in a couple of nonprimetime weekend shows.
Under the new deal, NBC U will sell and keep all ad time in "Raw," as well as in a weekend morning hour on USA and a "Raw" Spanish-lingo repeat on NBC U's Telemundo.
The WWE's revenues will come from a license fee of about $550,000 a week from the regularly scheduled shows on USA and Telemundo, plus extra license fees from two 90-minute specials each year on NBC in the "Saturday Night Live" time period and from a separate one-hour primetime spec on USA.
McMahon said she hopes to offset the lost $13 million in ad revenues by selling sponsorships to the live events and to community-outreach programs.
Also, the WWE is counting on bigger ratings for the "Raw" cablecasts; USA averaged 2.27 million total primetime viewers in 2004 compared with Spike's 1.21 million. Better ratings on USA, McMahon said, should result in better ratings on the WWE's weekly syndicated TV shows and better buy rates for the monthly pay-per-view events produced by the WWE.
She said the Telemundo repeats "are important because they'll reach a different audience and help us to grow our Spanish-language base of viewers."
Bonnie Hammer, president of USA and the Sci Fi Channel, said she helped to supervise the WWE Monday night shows when they were scoring some of the highest ratings on USA during the mid- to late-990s.
"Raw" is even more appropriate to USA now than in the '90s, Hammer said, because the net runs more programming that appeals to wrestling's target demo of men 18 to 34 -- everything from "The 4400" series to movies featuring Adam Sandler and Steven Seagal.
Expect massive cross-promotion, she said, with spots on NBC, Bravo, Sci Fi and Telemundo.
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