WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his Strictly Business podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including the metric he used to gauge the star power of talents in WCW.
Bischoff said, “Depending on the talent, you know, you can start with television. You can look at a performer’s wrestling talent performance over a six-month or 12-month period of time. It’s not the sole data point because a lot of that depends on, you know, was it a main event match? Was the match taking place early in the show? Was it buried somewhere in the middle of the show where there was a bear sandwich between three commercial breaks, you know, there’s so many variables. That’s why you have to kind of look over an extended period of time. When you look at the audience’s reaction and visa view ratings, you can do research. You can get what’s called a Q rating, or what used to be called the Q rating, which is a measurement of familiarity and response, likable, dislikable, favorable, or unfavorable. Don’t give a f**k kind of like the young bucks don’t give you there’s research available or that you can contract for that will help you determine that some of it is in stage, you know, you’re in the building, you feel the reaction, you see the reaction or lack thereof. That’s probably the best, and it’s one that I relied upon just as much as I did Q ratings or television performance if you’re sitting in the arena, especially if you sneak into the back and you’re sitting out there with the audience not sitting back and gorillas are watching in an office remotely. But if you’re out there in the venue and you can feel it, you can see it, and there’s, Yeah, 567, 8000 members of a focus group right there in front of you. Yeah, brain surgery.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
