WWE News: WWE Network still in the works, CFO George Barrios explains why and discusses content

WWE CFO George Barrios addressed the WWE Network plans during a presentation at the UBS Global Media conference. "We just believe there is too much there potentially not to keep pushing at it," Barrios said. "The drag on earnings is painful. It's painful to investors. It's painful to us but we just believe payoff could be too large so we are going to continue to push on that...

"Wherever the video is being monetized, we see that the real opportunity. We see growth there. Very high operating margins because we create our content once and then monetize it in a variety of those different platforms and also we have the ability to mine a significant library."

Barrios also spoke about WWE Network content. "There will be powerful, compelling exclusive original content that will be the core because otherwise people aren’t going to either watch it in the numbers you want or pay for it if you go that model," he said. "But we can wrap around some very fresh, compelling content that’s created from our 100,000 hour library. So for example, one of the shows that’s in production right now and it's tested really, really well in our focus group is the Monday Night Wars.

"It will be an episodic series, number of episodes be determined but somewhere between 10 to 15 episodes that looks at the year 2000 and 2001 battle between Ted Turner and Vince McMahon when they were on competing networks fighting for audience." Read the full transcript of Barrios's presentation at Seekingalpha.com.

Powell's POV: I'd also heard that past discussions also included airing unedited footage from the Attitude Era during late night hours on the network. I don't know if that one made it past the discussion stages, but that could be a nice hook for fans of that particular era.