Retro 2002 - DIRECTV Blockbuster PPV Promos and Countdown - Satellite TV History

20 minutes of promos from DIRECTV Blockbuster Pay-Per-View and countdown in 2002. Commentary "In this video we saw DIRECTV’s Direct Ticket co-branded with Blockbuster. This was actually more than just co-branding. DIRECTV’s Blockbuster pay-per-view channel offered more recent movies. Most of the movies in fact were less than a year past their release dates. Back in 2002 big name movies could often take a year or more to make their way to pay-per-view. But in this video we saw some movies from earlier that same year that were already being shown on pay-per-view. For example, the movie Clockstoppers ran in theaters in Spring of 2002, but by October it was already running on Blockbuster Direct Ticket Pay Per View. That’s just 7 months later. The same was true of the movie Resident Evil. It also ran in theaters that Spring. In fact most of the films we saw promoted were released less than a year before making their way to Blockbuster Direct Ticket pay-per-view. These include Showtime with Eddie Murphy and Robert Dinero, Joe Somebody with Tim Allen, Dragonfly with Kevin Costner, Collateral Damage with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Amelie, The New Guy, Super Troopers and even Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. It’s clear the Direct Ticket and Blockbuster branding on pay-per-view was reserved for more recent releases as opposed to just regular DIRECTV pay-per-view. Among the other promos in this video there are some real standouts that deserve to be highlighted. The best by far is the WWE Halloween promo featuring a grumpy Pete Rose who refuses to give out candy to kids dressed for Halloween as WWE superstars because their costumes don’t scare him. By the end of the promo he opens the door to find the real Kane from the WWE who thoroughly scares Pete as he grabs him by the throat. Following that the kids ransack his house as he lies unconscious on the porch. There’s also a general Blockbuster Pay-Per-View promo featuring a song sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies. You can tell they were having fun with the concept, finding creative ways to promote the channels. We also saw a strong prescence of wrestling and mixed martial arts on pay-per-view in 2002. There were promos for the WWE, TNA and UFC. In 2002 wrestling was still dominant as ultimate fighting was starting to enter the scene on a larger scale. There were upstarts in wrestling like the TNA which came on to the scene in May 2002. TNA stands for Total Nonstop Action. The WWE was also a new thing in 2002. Before that it was the WWF which stood for World Wrestling Federation, but they had to change the name after the World Wild Fund for Nature sued them for use of the letters and won in a UK court. In May of 2002 the WWF officially changed its name to the WWE which stood for World Wrestling Entertainment. In 2002 the UFC was still coming back from nearly going bankrupt in 2000 after Senator John McCain tried to ban the sport and convinced 36 states to pass laws banning what was called “no-holds-barred" fighting. Cable channels didn’t want to run UFC events because of the controversy and the organization had trouble finding venues for their fights in states for the same reason. UFC was still on DIRECTV at the time, but in a very limited way. In 2001 the UFC got new owners who secured athletic sanctioning and worked to repair the organization’s repution and expand it back into cable and pay-per-view. In this video we got to see how far the UFC had come in a little over a year and half after nearly going out of business. Eventually the UFC would become so popular and profitable that in 2023 they bought and merged with the WWE, holding a controling stake in the new company. The new company goes by the name TKO on the New York Stock Exchange which stand for Total Knock Out. We even saw a pay-per-view promo for a compilation of old wrestling superstars called Monsters of Mat. That shows you just how popular wrestling was in 2002. We also got to see some promos for pay-per view concerts and specials like Melissa Etheridge, Nickelback, Bon Jovi and La Viva Musica, a concert featuring latin music. There were promos for comedy specials too like Cedric The Entertainer and Shaq’s Comedy All Star Roast. Overall the promos were kind of light on traditional sports but we did see two promos for soccer matches. All in all, you can see that if you had the money, there was a lot to watch on pay-per-view and a lot of choices beyond just movies. We rented a lot of pay-per-view movies on DIRECTV in the early 2000s. And back then you could still record them which made it more attractive. Today copy protect prevents that. These promos and countdown appeared between airings of the movie Clockstoppers which is a fun little Nicelodeon movie about stopping time directed by Jonathan Frakes. Unfortunately it didn’t do well at the box office. Maybe a lot of people like me just waited for it to show up on pay-per-view." Retrograde 4/5 #retro #tv #satellite #directv