Thanks to Wes Jones for this report:
Just wanted to send a recap of HHH and Stephanie on the tonight’s (2/16) The Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch on CNBC. The interview consisted of two segments the first with HHH, the second with Stephanie and HHH.
As always there were the usual non-intentionally hilarious comments. Deutsch began the interview by stating he had John Stossell from ABC on his show recently and brought up the 20/20 expose on wrestling from about 20 years ago. Deutsch promised he wouldn’t call wrestling fake.
Deutsch then brought how HHH married into the family that owns the company. HHH stated he was a big star long before that happened and feels people put an incorrect emphasis on that. HHH stated that at first Vince and Linda frowned upon he and Steph’s relationship. HHH brought up how he and Steph were actually married on the show (mentioning the wedding on Raw) before they were dating.
Deutsch asked what drives the business, what draws the viewers. HHH sternly answered the personalities drive the business (gee I must be the only that watches for the wrasslin). HHH stated the characters come from a variety of sources. HHH stated Vince, a writing team and the wrestlers themselves come up with their characters. He admitted to Deutsch that Stephanie is the head of the writing team. HHH claimed the wrestlers, “have a lot of input, no one knows their character better then themselves”. HHH then admitted though that Vince always makes the final decision.
Deutsch brought up the Dx/attitude days, and asked if they went to far. HHH admitted they may have gone a bit too far but they needed to do something to bring in viewers at that time and it worked. HHH stated now they don’t have to do that to retain a large audience. Deutsch asked how parents should handle the violence and the crotch chopping, etc. HHH stated simply, “be a parent”. Deutsch asked him to elaborate. HHH stated parents should raise their children, not TV, or TV stars. HHH stated if a parent sees their child wrestling with another and they see him pick up a chair and try to hit the other kid they need to get up and stop it and explain what they watch is not real (HHH obviously not realizing that often times parents are WORKING when situations such as these occur and are not there to stop it).
HHH stated he appears at about 200 shows a year. HHH gave a brief mention he was in “Blade:Trinity”. Deutsch then asked what happens when he and Vince disagrees over a character and storyline. HHH responded (somehow with a straight face), “we honestly don’t discuss business that much, when we are around each other we often talk about other things, like working out, etc.”. They went to a commercial break and returned with Stephanie.
Deutsch posed a similiar question to Step., asking how does she interact when there is a disagreement. Stephanie stated she is only a sounding board and reiterated that they usually don’t talk business that much when they are together as a family. Deutsch then brought up how does she feel about the product denigrating women. Stephanie (somehow with a straight face) stated the company has never denigrated women.
She stated Dx may have pushed the envelope a bit to far but they have scaled back now. She stated they listen to their audience as far as where to go with storylines and they have a more conservative audience now then they did back then (and a much smaller one).
Deutsch asked if they were responding to maybe some kind of government pressure. Stephanie emphatically stated no, HHH then said partially, not necessarily directly to the government, but the country in general is more conservative.
Deutsch plugged Wrestlemania and they aired the HHH Wrestlemania commercial spoofing “Braveheart”. Deutsch also plugged HHH’s new book. Deutsch was a bit perplexed that the hip hop culture doesn’t make up more of there audience. HHH said they have a diverse audience, and after almost forgetting did bring up John Cena’s character. Deutsch began to wrap up the segment when Stephanie interrupted and briefly plugged this Sunday’s PPV (sure didn’t seem like HHH was).
