September 23, 2002 Observer Newsletter: Controversy after Billy and Chuck, HLA segments, more

Howard Stern used to say lesbians equal ratings. Eric Bischoff has said numerous times than controversy equals ratings. Or, as he actually said as part of Raw that he was an actor on in the role of providing such entertainment, that controversy equals cash.

And that was true in 1998.

For some reason, early last week, as the WWE got actually some positive mainstream press as being a progressive organization in its treatment of the subject of homosexuality. The company was given credit and Stephanie McMahon as head writer was all too happy to take credit for claiming a television breakthrough in doing a same sex marriage. Many stories claimed, unlike in the past, these gay characters didn’t lose all their matches, you know, like Gorgeous George lost more often than Billy & Chuck and George was actually mentioned in just about every story.

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September 16, 2002 Observer Newsletter: HLA and the wedding of Billy and Chuck

It was one of those moments that if you were watching wrestling and you had anyone in the room watching with you, you likely wanted to bury your head in a hole. I know I did.

It wasn’t a surprise, or even a shock, as pro wrestling has always been a business where scraping every last dime came before more than a smidgen of class. Raw was coming off two bad shows in a row and its rating bottomed out the previous week. It was facing competition from the season opener of Monday Night Football, a show that has traditionally cost Raw several tenths of rating points. And the loss of ratings was noted in virtually every mainstream discussion of pro wrestling. Moreover, the Raw roster has no depth. And they had no matches or angles that were going to draw. There were no easy answers.

At the same time, the company was thinking it had pulled a p.r. coup with the Billy & Chuck wedding, which never happened, and turned into a traditional wrestling angle.

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