On Tuesday, WWE made the announcement that Bruce Prichard will be replacing Eric Bischoff as the Executive Director of Friday Night SmackDown.
The news comes after two episodes of SmackDown on Fox and ends the short tenure of Bischoff in the role of Executive Director, which he was named in June alongside Paul Heyman on Raw.
Prichard, who has a history with WWE going back to 1987, returned to the company earlier this year for a behind-the-scenes role. His prior stint with the company ended with his release in December 2008 and worked for Impact Wrestling, MLW and launched his Something to Wrestle podcast over the past several years.
It is unknown what Bischoff’s status is with the company and whether he is being given a new assignment. Upon accepting the position with WWE, he moved to Stamford, Connecticut over the summer.
In a statement to POST Wrestling, WWE confirmed that Bischoff is no longer with the company:
Bischoff is no longer with the company and has been replaced by Prichard.
Wow, he barely had time for a cup of coffee. (Maybe a double espresso)
At least it gives him content for a podcast or two.
Maybe with the title 83 days.
Wonder what happened.
From what I remember from his podcast though he & his wife didn’t move all their stuff to Connecticut so might be a simple move back to Wyoming.
Best of luck to him.
Is Prichard still Vince McMahon’s puppet like he was purported to be in his first run? McMahon should have just named himself director. Either way, while Bischoff wasn’t the most inspiring choice, this one feels like the nail in the coffin for any hope of a decent Smackdown again.
LOL. Man I was wrong. I can’t believe I tried to defend Bischoff lasting longer than Heyman.
I guess what I hadn’t planned on was that Bischoff and his team would be so ineffective that week-to-week we were wondering whether he had even started.
Much like AEW Dynamite at the present time, Smackdown is not currently in the position to have a “down week”. Between trying to build an audience and the excessive scrutiny on the product, you’ve got to bring it right now.
Having said that, I’m not sure if a “kitchen sink” premiere episode and a Draft episode are fair barometers of anything. But who knows what else behind the scenes led to Bischoff being removed?
Both episodes were bad. I feel like the last 2 weeks have been especially bad to the point where I could fire the writers and hire 10 wrestling fans and do a much better job with minimal effort.
My fault. I was talking ratings… just sort of assuming that if the ratings stayed high, nobody would care what the content of shows looked like. But yes, content-wise I felt they were both weak.
Executives probably don’t care much about what is on TV if the ratings are high (barring violations of a content rating). But the content is what drives the ratings and other than the Rock degenerate night one I didn’t see anything that looked attractive to a potential viewer. Their rating was always going to be high that first night and they needed to leave a big impression, and IMO they failed. The draft for me confirmed Smack down is now a tune out for me nothing on the program interests me.
I feel for this man…he just moved to an overpriced shit hole, had Vince rewrite everyahow he was either shadowing or consulting on and got canned after one show.
The fuck?
First show was mainly going to be curiosity viewing, second show didn’t help by a dumb draft, not everyone actually watches those for any sport and secondly you were coming off bad publicity stemming from that HIAC and apparently lackluster Raw after that…plus the fact you had a big opening match interrupted by the thing people were hating on in the first place.
If Seth and Wyatt are your main tv program (Cain/Brock and Strowman/Fury are clearly for one event) then of course the rest of your program is going to suffer…your show is only as good as it’s main angle and this current one is absolute dog shit.
Vince wants ratinga to climb back up? Announce he’s stepping down on creative to focus in just the business aspects in order to not have your investors panic and drive down the stock and restore fan confidence.
Based on what I gather from interviews, podcasts and stories I hear on Vince’s creativity…his main genius is on bug picture and character development…he can still do that in a limited capactiy and let his creative team actually oversee everything else.
What big picture? I think that maybe he has some good ideas about how people look and maybe general character outline. But I have seen no evidence that he has any idea how to actually get anyone over in the big picture or deliver consistently interesting pig picture stories. WWE is plagued by short term booking and has been for years.
He has like 40 years of big picture examples…I wasn’t just limiting creative ideas to angles.
That’s so superfluous, there are alot more that goes into expanding a regional promotion and product into an national and then international powerhouse than what we see on TV.
People need to realize that…y’all keep thinking checkers.
Yes it’s sad he moved here and got rid of his ranch and Buffalo Billy Cody beer etc.
But by all accounts he didn’t really do anything. He wasn’t visible, barely got to learn the wrestlers or the storylines and was usually in catering or hard to find. Pritchard was running the shows anyway.
So really if he’s not doing anything and the other guy is doing the job anyway, doesn’t he have to take some of the ownership over his firing?
I didn’t say he was bad a business, just at creative. He had vision to back the right guys when he was expanding, and winning the Monday night wars but then decided he knew how to do it better and wanted the company to be bigger than its stars and he has been struggling ever since.
I have no issues with the visual presentation of his product, so if he is sticking to how things look and stay away from stories I think things would do just fine.
