George Barrios Says Fans Will Love WWE’s New Show On FS1

Wrestling Inc reports that during a fireside chat for the 47th Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston, WWE co-president George Barrios said that he expects that WWE fans will love the company’s upcoming new studio show on FS1. Here are highlights:

On the WWE-themed studio show: “We’re thrilled. We’ve seen around the world the value of these…clip shows, magazine shows, highlight shows. We’ve seen the value of shows like that to continue to drive engagement, not dissimilar to what we do on social platforms. We’re continuing the storytelling and try to do it 24/7 although Vince keeps reminding us we’re missing 10 minutes here and there. I think the FS1 show will be something similar where we will continue the excitement. I think people are gonna love it and FOX is gonna do an amazing job with it as obviously they have a lot of expertise doing shows like that. I think it’s gonna be great for fans.”

On creating content for WWE’s sixth hour: “To your point, for a long, long time we have created live in-ring content across six hours on Monday and Tuesday. It used to be that Raw and SmackDown were two hours and the other two hours went to either ECW, the precursor to the current NXT, Main Event, WWE Superstars. So, this is not something new as we’ve done it forever. Last year, to your point, it was primarily 205 Live, Mixed Match Challenge on Facebook for 20 weeks. So for us, when you say ‘What’s the focus?’ Our content is always one of three things: we’re trying to drive engagement, trying to drive some level of direct monetization or drive some level of indirect monetization as a promotional platform. That doesn’t change so we’re thinking for that sixth hour, across those three parameters what’s the best structure for the content? It’s not a new thing and is something we’re always working through. Right now it’s 205 Live… but we’ll see where we come out on that.”