THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005    The inaugural season of the RealProWrestling league is coming to a close with the season finale Championship episode this weekend.  Wrestlers will compete for $250,000 in prize money in seven individual weight classes and the inaugural Championship Team Title.    The championship episode will air Sunday, May 15 on PAX at 4 p.m. ET/ PT, 3 CST/MST (2-hour airing) and will re-air on Fox Sports Net on Wednesdays: May 18 and May 25 at 3 p.m. nationally. (two hour-long airings)     GUESTS ON CALL    Gary Abbott- Director of Communications for USA Wrestling    Rulon Gardner- 2 X Olympic medalist, commentator and spokesperson for RPW    Lee Gallagher- The Ball Park to speak about the ratings    Martin Fischer/Chris Chickering -RealProWrestling staff    Toby Willis - RPW co-founder    Opening Comments    Gary Abbott:  USA Wrestling is the national governing body for amateur wrestling in the United States. We are involved in programs for the youth up to those that compete in the Olympics including Rulon as well as some athletes competing in RPW. RPW has been a positive step forward for the sport of wrestling in the United States and world wide as it become better known across the world with the international broadcasts happening this year.     The large impact RPW offers, is the exposure of the sport of wrestling.  Getting the sport out in front of the general public through the Television broadcasts.  The RPW program has been amazing and has had a very strong impact since the program was started.  The league has done good job promoting individual athletes and telling their personal stories.      The league is also establishing a record in the Television industry that will help USA Wrestling continue to try and get more and more wrestling on national TV.  RPW's success on television opens up opportunities for all levels of wrestling to get more consideration for television exposure.      The impact to the athletes - The financial support they have been able to receive by competing from RPW is allowing them to concentrate full time on their wrestling.  Obviously an athlete who is able to pay his bills and take care of his family will be more motivated and more successful in training and preparation for World and Olympic competition. Our governing body supports the organization and those involved in RPW in a strong fashion.     Rulon Gardner:   As an former athlete and someone who enjoys the sport of wrestling, I have been at many different tournaments around the country and have had many parents come up to me and comment how RPW helped explain the sport of wrestling.   RPW helps the kids that are new to the sport of wrestling see the light and gives the kids a future in the sport.    A lot of athletes came out and had a break through season in the 1st RPW.  That is hopefully going to catapult them into the 2008 Olympics as well as help them through the National Championships, World Team Trials and Olympic Trials.       On the future of international wrestling- I think the world is scared because they see the caliber of wrestling the Americans are going to bring to the table. RPW is helping the Americans get better.  RPW promotes wrestling from the grass roots all the way up to international level. RPW is going to help USA Wrestling to become a leader in the future instead of a follower and take the sport of wrestling to higher and better place and help it earn respect.     Lee Gallagher:  RPW introduced a brand new sport and new league on two networks.  There were some hurdles on the networks.  PAX is not a sport network, so we had to encourage fans to come over to PAX and on FSN our time slot was on a weekday afternoon.     PAX 1st outing 325,000 people 2+, 181,000 households tuned in which is a .2 rating.      Week two, although the numbers decreased, we took a look at the demographics and realized it was due to the loss of boys 2-17.  That demographic was looking for a comic book/super hero aspect instead of the sport of wrestling.     After week two, the numbers have steadily increased. Episode 2 reached 118,000 households and has increased each week to week five with 178,000 households. When you look at PAX's top 41 core markets, RPW is achieving a .2 rating.    What RPW is realizing is that we are reaching the core demographic of men 18-49 and men 25-54.     Fox Sports Net the total house combined average was 325,000 households a week for the first half of the season.  Fox Sports Net was averaging a steady .2 rating.      Overall, over five weeks, we have delivered RPW to 1.6 million households by combining  PAX and Fox Sports Net.          Fox Sports Net- Over first four episodes RPW dropped in episode three because Fox Sports Net fluctuation in coverage. When reviewing the regions individually RPW did well in Detroit, the Midwest, the North and Northwest averaging a .3-.4 rating.    RPW is now world wide.  It was picked up by Euro sport international television broadcasting adding 13 million households.  The agreement RPW has made with ESPN Asia, will add distribution to 100 million households.     Chris Chickering:   On the grassroots side, RPW was focused on targeting our core audience of 1 million current wrestlers between high school, college and middle school.  There are 20,000 wrestling programs across the country.  RPW's direct mail camp was focused on the top 20,000 high school, college and middle school coaches.  The direct mail piece was a package including a glossy brochure which explained the league as well as a letter encouraging coaches to promote RPW.   RPW produced three million television cards which were distributed through a grassroots effort.  The cards went out 200,000 coaches and we got over 800 volunteers of people interested in distributing the information for the league.  Over 2,700,000 cards passed out at over 800 wrestling tournaments across the country.  We hired a street team company out of LA to target top 100 wrestling events as well as MLB spring training and Arena football.      The radio buys for RPW were 30 / 60 sec spots on ESPN, ESPN 2 and a number of other networks.  RPW also took out banner ads in the sports page of USA Today and inserted a  full page from letter from Rulon Gardner and  Dan Gable explaining the launch of the league and explaining the brand strategy which is family value based entertainment and pure athletic performance.  The letter helped to positioning RPW as the one place on the dial where family can tune in with their kids and have a program they can feel proud of and safe watching with their children.     Martin Fischer:  The production technology and capability of the state of the art television were brought to bear in full force in RPW.  The strongest feedback we have received from the public was they saw a level of excitement in the detail and accuracy.      Toby Willis: We have been happy with the progress of RPW has made.  We have known for years from USA Wrestling events that the wrestling has been incredible.  RPW thought wrestling was an untapped market and that we had ability to bring in, due to technology, creative thinking and excellent problem solving abilities we could create a super product.     Feedback about the level of production-Feedback for RPW to this point has been that the level of the production far exceeded their expectation.  The word is out about RPW.   We have one million wrestlers in our country and reaching them is not an easy task.        We are excited about the modification of the rules and RPW has shocked a lot of people.  The level of action RPW offers and the evolution of the rules have opened the show up for a lot more action.      RPW has only scratched the surface on the background stories. There is a lot more to show to learn about the RPW wrestlers.  The wrestlers are family guys that work hard.  They are very diverse and we just let them be themselves and tell their stories.      About the future- RPW is pleased with international people expressing and interest.  It is nice to be in a financial situation where we don't have any debt going in to season two.  R