During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com discussed the upper management shakeup in WWE with the departures of Michelle Wilson and George Barrios:
“Michelle Wilson was a big proponent of the Network — George Barrios was too — but Michelle Wilson in particular, she’s the one who talked Vince into the free months things and into putting all the pay-per-views onto the Network.”
“I don’t know if [Vince McMahon] is having remorse about that. Now that you’ve done that with the free months — you know it’s like what is the reason why the network is declining? Is it all the free months you were giving out in the beginning that lowered the value of the Network? Is it that creative is down and people have less interest in the pay-per-views because the pay-per-views have less value? I think there’s something to that right now.”
“Is it because NXT moved to television? I guess the best way on Thursday is that if the US falls more than the international number — because NXT [isn’t on television there] — now NXT is on TV in the UK now, but they weren’t in the last quarter. In most markets, Canada being the exception, NXT was not on television. So, if the international number of subscribers falls what it should fall, but the US falls greater that would be an indication that putting NXT on television hurt the WWE Network number in the United States.”
“It’s gotta be something really serious for him to fire both people without notice with no succession plan and kinda killing the succession plan… because if something happened to Vince, you know everybody expected that Michelle Wilson and George Barrios would be the people to run the company. Now nobody knows who will run the company and that uncertainty is one of reasons the stock price dropped a lot.”
