Steph on Access Hollywood Transcript
June 21st, 7 PM Eastern
Access Hollywood started their WWF Newsbit with the topic of the People's Champ. They said, with The Rock gone, the WWF's ratings are sinking. SmackDown has lost 40% of its viewers since last year. With Rocky missing, things might even be worse for the WWF after the decline of XFL and the competition of new seasons of NBC's Friends, CBS's Survivor, and Fox's Temptation Island.
AH mentioned that Vince's daugther, Stephanie McMahon, is not only a WWF Star, but also the director of the television writing. Clips of Steph on WWF TV were shown, and then a clip of Steph working at a computer. Then, a clip of Stephanie talking was aired. She said, "Well, maintaining the momentum of the WWF certainly is a tough job, but we're up to any challenge."
The subject switched to RAW, and how it was losing viewers since moving to TNN. Stephanie commented on that, saying: "Overall, its a little bit more of a challenge to have our viewers find TNN, but we are destination programming as we proved on USA."
Steph said the biggest challenge is to keep up with the audience's taste. The boss's daughter also said it was a natural fit for the WWF to combine with MTV (for Tough Enough) since the WWF has the most male teen viewers. AH said Tough Enough was getting excellent reviews about it being true, honest, and full of heart. AH and SM described the show's concept.
The subject was then switched to the WWF buying WCW. Stephanie said, "We made the acquisition, and now it is a large part of our storyline. It's...a tremendous opportunity."
AH wondered if the Rock would return to help the WWF's ratings. The Rock was shown agai, saying he would try to juggle both as long as he could.
They mentioned RAW still being the highest rated cable TV series, ang they plugged King of the Ring and Tough Enough. And that was it :)!