David Penzer reveals how Jeff Jarrett told him that streaming was the future years ago.
With the WWE signing a $5 billion deal with Netflix, it seems the future of wrestling is on streaming, not TV. This is something Jeff Jarrett called years ago, as David Penzer recently told WrestleZone’s Bill Pritchard.
The former ring announcer spoke about the WWE’s Netflix deal and how streaming gives them so much more freedom than regular TV. He also noted how Jeff Jarrett, who is featured in Penzer’s new book, called the move to streaming after he left TNA to form Global Force Wrestling. Jarrett was an early proponent of Triller TV (when it was still FITE/Flipps Media), and Penzer said Jarrett saw what was coming for consuming media.
“I’ll never forget the conversation,” David Penzer said. “And it dawned on me as I turned on Netflix to watch Raw last night. I hadn’t really thought about it too much. I’ve told the story before about him saying that streaming was the next thing. But it never really clicked with Netflix on Raw and all that until I turned on the TV and it wasn’t… And one of the things I realized last night that was kind of cool and kind of different is, they have no time constraints. There’s no hardouts for a commercial break.” David Penzer said.
“There’s no… We got no hidden 11:00 clock ending. I mean, they basically got a blank slate to do whatever they want. Because each one is itself a separate entity. It’s not a television, a television network show, it’s a separate entity. It really didn’t hit me until I was watching it last night. How cool that it is and how different that is. Because it is always been TV, you time out the matches, you hit the spots. Promo goes long, you got to shrink the matches. The matches go long, you got to shrink the promo. You got to be out at 11:05 or whatever that it. And that’s totally all gone away. Like I said, I didn’t think about it until I was watching it,” added David Penzer.
David Penzer: Jeff Jarrett Told Me ‘Streaming: That’s The Future’
“But I’ll never forget he left TNA for Global Force, he started that. And I called and poked around. ‘Hey, you need a ring announcer?’ But he would always call me and see how the XWF was doing. I would call him and see how TNA was doing in the early starts. Those two companies were the only other thing other than WWE at that time. So, we sort of were keeping track of each other. Not stooging things off to each other, we were having professional conversations as far as how things are progressing off the record. But yeah, he called me and I said, ‘Jeff you have anybody interested in TV? I know you and Toby Keith were buddies,'” David Penzer said.
“I am sure he knows a lot of people. He goes, ‘Penzer, you don’t get it. Streaming. That’s the future.’ My 14-year son watches stuff on his computer. My son never really had a TV. He streams stuff. And to me, I never got it until they had those gimmick sticks. So, now you don’t have to watch it on you computer you can watch it on your TV. You just have to subscribe to all those places. But I’m thinking about you get to turn on a computer, and go to a website, and stream. It just didn’t make sense to me. As I said yesterday, he was right and he usually is.”
