- WWE announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2007. Revenues totaled $132.6 million as compared to $107.6 million in the prior year quarter while operating income was $24.7 million as compared to $17.5 million in the prior year quarter. Net income was $21.5 million, or $0.30 per share, as compared to $15.5 million, or $0.22 per share, in the prior year quarter.
- With the positive earnings report, WWE got some credit for their financial work as shares went up to over 7% today, trading at 16.40 at time of this writing. The biggest mover was consumer products, where WWE had an increase of 47% over the same period last year, thanks to strong sales of video games, DVDs, magazines etc. Trading also hit the 16.93 mark during the day and although high, it's still not close to their 52 week high of 18.60.
Shares for the company closed at 15.31 yesterday.
- The taped edition of Raw on 2/11 scored a 3.39 cable rating off hours of 3.36 and 3.42, and averaged just under 5 million viewers.
- The 2/8 episode of WWE Friday Night Smackdown scored a final 2.6 broadcast rating, which is down from last week's 2.8 rating.
- Stephanie McMahon actually fired creative writer Dave Lagana while he was on vacation. WWE sent out a one sentence e-mail to alert employees of the firing. In the past, there had been multiple complaints from others in the company about him. During the spring of 2006, some agents claimed he was a problem and there was a belief he may have been fired at that time. Instead, Lagana was demoted from head writer of Smackdown to head writer of ECW.
It is said that Dusty Rhodes was told ahead of time that Lagana would not be returning from his vacation. Rhodes requested not to be given the head writing job for ECW as he didn't want the extra workload and pressure of that position.
- Raw on 1/28 drew 206,000 Canadian viewers (about a 2.2 rating). Smackdown on 1/25 in Canada did 153,000 viewers and ECW drew 62,000 viewers.
- One of the major carriers of pay-per-views in Canada has dropped the Ring of Honor PPVs due to a lack of buys. One of the recent ROH PPV offerings only mustered about 36 buys nationwide. This is alarming since ROH does have television on the Fight Network in Canada. TNA isn't doing much better in Canada. One of the recent TNA PPVs only drew a few hundred PPV buys. At this point, only UFC and WWE draw serious buy numbers in Canada.
