Hacker News Reader

Comment by mariodiana | Hacker News Reader

I've heard people characterize cable news as kayfabe—the handbook for professional wrestling. Cable news is entertainment, and the same way the WWF was eventually pressured into changing their name to the WWE, we have to hope one day CNN and Fox News (along with MSNBC, etc.) will change their monikers.

View on HN

It seems that the change from WWF to WWE was mainly caused by a trademark dispute with the World Wildlife Fund, but they used the opportunity to emphasize their entertainment focus.

>Mrs. McMahon [(CEO of WWE)] said the company began considering dropping the word "Federation" from its name when World Wildlife Fund (a/k/a World Wide Fund for Nature) prevailed in a recent court action in the United Kingdom. The court ruling prevents the World Wrestling Federation from the use of the logo it adopted in 1998 and the letters WWF in specified circumstances. The "Fund" has indicated that although the two organizations are very different, there is the likelihood of confusion in the market place by virtue of the fact that both organizations use the letters WWF. The Fund has indicated that it does not want to have any association with the World Wrestling Federation. "Therefore," said, Mrs.McMahon, "we will utilize this opportunity to position ourselves emphasizing the entertainment aspect of our company, and, at the same time, allay the concerns of the Fund." [0]

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090119180317/http://corporate....

> WWF was eventually pressured into changing their name to the WWE

There was no pressuring over intent. The World Wildlife Fund owned the rights to WWF and sued.

https://www.cnet.com/news/wrestling-loses-wwf-to-wildlife

I'm aware of that, but I don't think that changes things much. They chose to call it "entertainment," when they could have called it any number of things. But at the time they had been under increasing criticism of the matches being fixed, etc.

WWF officially broke kayfabe 1989 way before the name change because they didn't want to spend the money necessary for live sporting events. Before that pro wrestling was regulated just like boxing or MMA, with state commissioners and taxes and medical requirements.

Nope, not even close. Even if we are pretend that all wrestling fans were completely unaware that the WWF was scripted, that ended in Montreal in 1997 when Vince McMahon forced the belt off of Brett Hart. He didn't change the name of the company until 2002. Even before that, Vince declared it was all a work because he was tired of being under the thumb of various athletic and boxing commissions. His people did steroids and he wasn't going to stop them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com