WWE Co-President George Barrios was asked about Eric Bischoff’s short stint as SmackDown Executive Director and if RAW Executive Director Paul Heyman is fully integrated into the RAW creative process during today’s WWE 2019 Q3 investors call.
Barrios wouldn’t talk about any specific individual, but he said WWE tries to put the best people into the roles that fit the best, and the Executive Director roles were created to allow Vince to be more targeted with how he involved himself in the creative process.
“I think Vince has mentioned it before on the call that one of the internal projects we’ve had is just like every part of the organization,” Barrios said (H/T to Fool.com) “And it’s how you continually strengthen the structure and the process to accomplish the goal of that particular function. In the case of the writing there’s a lot of work done early in the year around that. One of the manifestations of that was the creation of these roles Executive Directors of each of the brands. And as Vince mentioned it allowed him to be more targeted and how he involved himself in the creative process. So we’re really really happy about the structure and continue to invest in that and strengthen it internally. I’m not going to talk about one — a particular individual. Ultimately the structure, the process loops you to create around that, if you do that really, really well over time we try to recruit the best talent possible to put into the roles and that’s what we do everywhere.”
Barrios continued and wouldn’t speak on Bischoff or Heyman specifically, but he said WWE feels really good about the changes they made.
“So the creative writing process is not really different but obviously I’m not going to talk specifically about any individual, either Eric or Paul,” Barrios said. “But we feel really good about the changes we made to the structure in process.”
As noted back in July during the Q2 earnings call, Vince talked about how he hired Heyman and Bischoff under the new roles because it would help prevent him from “getting in the weeds” as he had in the past.
“One the things that we’ve done is hire 2 Executive Directors, one for Raw and 1 for SmackDown and in doing so, it allows me to look at a longer-range story – our standpoint and also spend more time on talent development and not get into the weeds as much as I had to do in the past. That is a really, really good thing for a long-term as well as short-term. Actually, we’ve seen a big result already,” Vince said in his opening statement in July.
During that call back in July, Vince was later asked by an investor about why WWE chose to hire Executive Directors at that time, and how much latitude Heyman and Bischoff would have.
“Why now question is a logical one,” Vince said back in July. “I can’t personally be in the weeds any longer and we have these 2 individuals who have a longer range of point of view and a developmental point the of view. Both of these individuals have extensive backgrounds in the business from various aspects and with the organizational aspects that they have and the depth of talent, executive talent we now attract is going to be really good for our business. And how much latitude they will have, that’s again it allows me to have a broader overview of things and escape from just getting on the weeds. So they’ll have a lot of latitude.”
