#28thfeb2016

Facebook has recently provided the public with access to the new reactions feature on their website.

This new feature may now allow fans and audiences of specific like pages to give a more detailed reaction other than the iconic ‘Like’ button. If for example WWE posted an exclusive behind the scenes promo for the following night's show, users are able to give a more emotional reaction. WWE can then observe this data and see if their fans are interested in the content they posted. If so, they may decide to alter story lines. The same applies to any content posted.

However in a recent article posted on the Drum, by Dan Hocking, states that the reaction features are irrelevant for brands to take advantage off. I disagree with this post as opinions from the audiences matters, it doesn't matter if their reaction to the content is an emoticon. Fans will still post their honest opinions as a part of wanting their opinions to be heard. 

The article also states "Facebook itself has already said that engagement metrics aren’t a reliable indicator of whether social marketing has improved or benefited your business.” However, for storytelling content which WWE produce more than 4 televised shows a week, excluding the constant house shows. The writers at WWE are able to listen to their audience if they choose to by looking at the reactions statics.

These two photos are from Snapchat, posted by WWE. To help promote across a different platform(s). They also post sneak peaks of the live shows events, glimpses at house shows and even a few promos now and then. This is a form of transmedia, as WWE understand how to approach their audience with content they want, this is what brings the viewers in, for high ratings.

I guess we could class this now as the new second screen experience from WWE, except they never post during commercials. I previously posted about the WWE second screens application feature, check it out here.

You have to add WWE on Snapchat, they are not a part of the stories tab I looked at and wrote about in this document and post: Click here to view

Click here for the previous post, check it out before reading this.

For the final part of this post click here.

I decided to use separate posts as I feel it makes the research much neater.

Sam Ford then follows off from Herny Jankins’ post:

“Thanks for inviting me to take part in this dialogue, Henry. Like you, I’ve been a long-time viewer of pro wresting and—while there are a long list of reasons I would hardly call the pro wrestling industry as a whole a progressive one—it certainly has been transformative in the way it deals with storytelling. For those who don’t watch WWE, let me back up for a moment and explain exactly why a 24/7 storytelling model makes particular sense for the WWE and why I think it behooves both those working in the media industries and media scholars to pay especially close attention.First, pro wrestling has the opportunity to conduct storytelling on multiple levels simultaneously:”

He continues to say in bullet points

“The pro wrestling match is a narrative into itself—the fictional depiction of an athletic competition with a beginning, middle, and end—governed by rules that have remained fairly consistent across the history of this “sports entertainment” performance genre. So, as opposed to any other sort of fictional programming, almost any individual segment of any pro wrestling show is, in itself, a discrete chapter that could be watched on its own as a “mini-episode.”

Then, there is a narrative that spans the course of an individual show. An episode of WWE RAW or WWE Friday Night Smackdown or a PPV event all takes place, typically, in one arena, in front of one live crowd…like an individual sporting event…and there is a script that connects all of the matches and “segments” taking place in any one night together into a discrete whole, as an episode of television.

At the next level, there is the ongoing story arc of the WWE, which is typically built in one-month increments and which leads to a climax with the pay-per-view event. In other words, the month of programming leading up to a “big show” basically is designed to set up the rivalries, the tensions, and the background story to get people to tune into the major show that resolves all the questions that the programming has built up to. In the days before there was closed circuit and PPV, this is the same model wrestling promoters like Vince’s father used to drive people to go to Madison Square Garden or the other big arenas in his regional circuit—Boston, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc.—to see the big rivalries taking place at the moment. The TV programming plays a promotional element to drive people to the most important shows, where typically the best matches take place, where the championships are most likely to change hands, and where, traditionally, the biggest moments would take place.

But, at the next level, of course the storylines coming out of one PPV event typically role right into the next, so WWE maintains a “TV season” that runs all year long—that means there are 6 hours of WWE TV shows on network/cable every week, along with a range of internet, DVD, and on-demand shows—with no “re-run season.” For WWE, the climax of each “season” is Wrestlemania, so the typical flow is that the new WWE season in a way begins the night after Wrestlemania, dealing with the aftermath of the biggest show of the year, and everything from that point forward slowly starts to build to the next Wrestlemania.

Finally, since WWE’s season never really ends, there are “meta” narratives that spans the course of time. Since WWE has the advantage of both having a deep well of serialized stories that go back for decades—with at least most of the previous decades’ archives saved—as well as the fact that most of those individual units—matches, interviews, etc.—can be treated as their own discrete segment—they have a way of drawing from their archive that few can. They can tell the story of the evolution of a particular character through the course of that history…and, since they have bought the archives of many of their competitors now out of business, that story can be told by even looking at their history as they’ve jumped from one part of the “pro wrestling” narrative universe to another. They can also tell the history of particular time periods in wrestling, of particular promotions, of particular types of matches, of particular rivalries…there are a wide range of ways they can slice and dice—and move through—their history.”