Former WCW and WWE on-screen personality Eric Bischoff spoke to Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, discussing his TEDx conference presentation from last month. During the conversation, he explained in his conference that the news media of today, essentially in the political realm, would take formulas from pro wrestling to elicit reactions from audiences instead of making them reason with thought. He details how the more popular pundit/debate forum method is financially beneficial as opposed to actual reporting:
“The launch of CNN was designed to report news from all over the world. Then the networks realized it is far less expensive when have you three or four people sitting around arguing or discussing the news as opposed to having people going out and reporting it. That was a dollar-driven economic evolution, and now everybody has gotten used to people who aren’t journalists giving their opinions of the news. They’re giving you information, so they have to create emotion or no one will watch, and that’s what they’re doing.”
Bischoff hasn’t been active in a television wrestling role since his time with IMPACT Wrestling, which ended in 2012 for a backstage position. He revealed that speaking at the conference brought back memories of performing in WCW, cutting opening promos on Nitro:
“I had an entirely different talk laid out until the night before, and I woke up early in the morning and decided on the spot that I was going to completely change it up. Since I had so little time to prepare for it, I improv’d a lot of that, and it reminded me so much of the way we used to do some of the best promos we ever did.”
Readers can check the rest of the interview here, where Bischoff briefly discuss politics and potentially returning to television.
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