The Territories Shall Rise Again
The death of pro wrestling territories was authored long ago. Maybe it's time for a rewrite. Credit Vince McMahon, blame cable television , whatever. They're gone. For now. Conventional wisdom is that advances in technology preclude a return to the territory days. Information technology is too cheap and production technology is too expensive. The former allows people to explore beyond their local wrestling product. The latter makes it too impossible for local wrestling to compete with WWE. Perhaps. Conventional wisdom is often wise, but sometimes it's off base. (I'd insert a line about politics, but I don't want to be banned by Indy promoters.) Conventional wisdom goes awry when it masquerades as fundamental truth. Is it fundamentally true that, when people are allowed to sample a "major league" product, they ignore their local product? Does flashier television production fundamentally disqualify simpler productions from being emb