Do TV ratings really matter anymore?

[BestSportsEntertainer]

Often times, you'll see people point to low TV ratings as evidence that WWE's popularity is declining.

However all TV shows' ratings are down.

Mad Men is widely considered to be possibly the best show ever. However it never averaged more than 2.5 million viewers per season. The most viewers the show ever received was only 3.54 million. NCIS used to get 20 million viewers every week, but the latest episode only got 13.83 million. Obviously that's still a great number of people, but that's also a decline of 6-7 million. Most other shows, such as Law and Order and the NFL, have lost viewers.

People are finding different ways to watch TV shows. You can watch Raw online for free or on Hulu. You can watch highlights and all the important parts on Youtube. You can read the results online. Simply put, cable TV is dying, and ratings are no longer an accurate way to gauge WWE's popularity.

So do TV ratings really matter? Is WWE as popular as it once was? If not, what could they do to increase their popularity?

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It's hard to say really. I mean, you could simply say that the popularity of WWE, the NFL, MBL, etc. are fading, yet these companies are still taking in hug amounts of revenue. The days of WWE drawing audiences of 5 to 6 million people each week on Raw are gone and aren't likely to be coming back and part of the reason it reached those heights in the first place is because of the Monday Night War. Pro wrestling was presented and characters were portrayed in ways that nobody'd ever seen before and a whole lot of people who probably weren't really long term fans started watching, enjoyed it and eventually moved onto other things as the Attitude Era was something of a fad. TV fads can last a handful of years, sometimes they last far less, but that's generally how it goes. The next to last season of Jersey Shore, for instance, was drawing between 6 to 7 million viewers for every new episode and even reruns were drawing big numbers; the last season of the show saw viewership go from 6 to 7 million to hovering around 2 million per new episode. By this time, the show had been on the air for a few years and a lot of viewers simply moved on.

As has been pointed out by the OP, there are different ways of watching TV now. You can use tablets, phones or what have you to watch TV, stream stuff like the WWE Network or record shows a season at a time and binge watch whenever you feel like, which is the new trend right now. TV won't ever completely go away just like DVDs and CDs haven't completely gone away even though you can download and stream movies or music.

Not counting DVR viewership, the average episodes of Raw and SmackDown Live draw about 3.2 and 2.67 million viewers and those are big numbers compared with most shows on basic cable. At any point through the given year, only a handful of shows on basic cable draw more like a couple of shows on Fox News, like Bill O'Reilly's show, Monday Night Football and an occasional basketball/baseball game if it's between two top teams. Even Monday Night Football is now only drawing usually a bit more than half of what it once did. Basketball and baseball rarely draw more than Raw and sometimes less than SmackDown Live yet they're still thriving and so is WWE. The company's brought in record revenue for the past 3 years in a row, I remember reading that WWE did in excess of $730 million for 2016. So they're making more money than ever and obviously have a pretty good handle on getting the most out of their fans, so when you're generated record revenues, turning significant profit and able to put said profits back into the company then it's hard to say that a company is in trouble.

 

[ISkye]

They do, but to a way less extent than they once served or what people who share them think they do. Even though this can vary on how a company receives income and especially the type of programming it is it really isn't a big deal as it was even 10 years ago let alone 20 onward. They didn't matter prior in pro-wrestling when they were selling out large venues in the 1950's or drawing 7000-9000 by word of mouth in 1930's San Antonio, Texas. They sold those tickets for a card with 3 or 4 top draw matches and that alone sold any merchandise, Alcohol, Food, etc. Worked a lot like classic styled boxing booking.

Then of course it evolved, and over a short course we hit a technological spurt and getting on television even on a large local level was a great plus. Then of course we all know Vince and his history with PPV, and everything else regarding the attitude era and what not. Then here we are now, and the WWE Network and them giving Wrestlemania 33 away for free with Goldberg, Lesnar, Triple HHH, All 3 Shield Members, Jericho, Widely popular music artists, etc should indicate how important it is now.

NJPW has finally rebounded to a degree where WWE grabbed two of their biggest draws and they made Naito a bigger draw than Nakamura's peak IC title run from a mid card / tag guy. They did great 2015, better 2016, and they've been able to make consistent good on all things they've said while still profiting. The initial death of a lot of pro-wrestling in Japan was the lack of TV deals. AJPW and NJPW suffered quite a bit, but in the era where it's less important and their touring / networking presence has brought them back up and out of the dark era.

They do matter, but far less than people who try to be wrestling analysts in comment sections think they matter. They are worth sharing, but considering them some indisputable evidence something is moving towards something so out of a typical fans grasp is ridiculous. WWE & Pro-Wrestling in general has done very well for itself globally in the last 2 years whether it be from the peak of NJPW and the WWE mountain or the top ropes of PWG and CZW looking up. It can always increase of course, and that's what all these companies have been trying to do (for the most part). The endless trying to relate to hip-hop, gaming, comic, etc communities. Social media and trying to reach out in ways that aren't traditional or even correlate for more than one common ground. I don't think we're going to hit one of these peaks of pro-wrestling in the last century for a while. However, looking like were on the right path as a whole collective doesn't seem like it's out of reality.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

Yes, they matter. WWE will always be welcome on USA Network but if USA Network and cable TV in general can't make as much money then they can't pay as much too WWE.

Fortunately for WWE, cable is only one of their revenue streams. If they can find other revenue streams to pick up the slack it won't matter as much. But unless that happens, ratings do matter.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

It only matters durig the last year of their tv deals because if they want to do get a better deal, they need to perform. But right now, they don't really, because wwe gets the same amount whatever their rating are high or low so for them, it don't really matter.

 

[Kodo Sawaki]

They matter, but not as much as people believe. Shows do get canceled when they fall in expected ratings but also if they believe that its useful for that particular show to be there because its popular with certain demographic of people they will renewed it. Now with streams and torrents and other stuff its in decline. But it doesnt really matter if you make good money off it. TV is just one of the platforms for getting your product there and making something out of it.

Is WWE as popular as it once was?

As in Hogan/Monday Night Wars era no. But as silly as it sounds they make more money off it because they did good on advertisements and other stuff. WWE Network and other stuff brings them tons of money. For example this is from WWE site and confirms what Jack- Hammer said about last year

Revenue increased 11% to $729.2 million, the highest in the Company’s history, including record levels of revenue from its Network, Television, Live Event, Venue Merchandise, and WWE Shop segments

And Vince, even though Monday Night Wars and Attitude Era did great in viewership, barely financially survived then. So you can see that they adapted and do great even if ratings are way down from certain times.

 

[Radical]

WWE has so many revenue streams now that TV ratings alone are not that big of a deal.

They still matter to the extent that if the ratings were to go down drastically from like 2.7 - 3.4 million viewers to 1.7 - 2.4 million viewers per episode, the WWE would have to take a good, hard look at their TV product and consider that it clearly is definitely less compelling than it has been in years.

I am actually pretty amazed how WWE's TV ratings has stayed pretty steady around a 2.7 - 3.4 rating for Raw and SmackDown for years. Considering for Raw they actively and routinely go to commercial during matches and often don't have a particularly strong storyline and intensity of events building throughout the show to keep viewers wanting to watch live that they still get decent numbers.

Personally, I cannot watch a full Raw or SD episode. SD would be a little easier since it's only 2 hours, but they still go to commercial during matches which is just a message to me to go find something else to watch, but Raw is 3 hours and seems like twice the number of awkwardly placed commercials and dry filler segments makes it very hard to watch the whole show live.


What it comes down to for the WWE is that they don't just rely as heavily on TV ratings for driving their revenue and gauging their popularity as they used to. Like I said, if their ratings were to REALLY go down significantly, then you would think WWE would try to do something to make their TV shows more compelling to watch live, but until that happens, I think you can expect the same relatively slow and safe storybuilding style programming that we've seen for years in WWE.

 

[Navi]

Someone tried to explain to me once just how the TV rating system worked, and it was damm complicated. For example it's almost impossible to tell how many people are actually watching the show, and how are they watching. Just because a show is on doesn't mean anyone is watching it. Also bars and restaurants who stream these events. Could be 10-500 people or anywhere inbetween.

As long as they get a ballpark figure I think they should be happy. No kidding that viewership has decreased and probably still will, but if they have a couple of million people watching it should be enough to keep them on the air. The only time Vince might care it when it comes to renewing the contract and the fight ensues over money.

 

[multiverseman.com]

People who don't think WWE's TV ratings are important are fooling themselves. RAW and Smackdown power everything in the WWE ecosystem. The network, the merchandise, the live events, everything. Less eyeballs normally means less money. The reason they're making so much money is because they're gouging less fans for more money. They've opened up tons of revenue streams to hit the same people for tons of crap. They audience has shrunk and is shrinking. The network numbers, regardless of their spin isn't growing. That's not good. The longer you leak, the quicker you sink.

Then there's the next TV deal. Their deal with NBCU is by far their biggest stream. If they get a lowball deal the next time, they're in trouble. Bad press and stock drops follow. Then panic.

So yeah, it matters.

 

[rmp0012002]

It doesn't to the WWE but it does to the network that pays them a ton of money. The sponsors money is what USA pays Vince with and if the people that buy their products aren't watching then the amount of the next contract goes down or they don't re-sign and Vince has to find another network. Wrestling doesn't work without tv.

 

[therockiswwf]

And Vince, even though Monday Night Wars and Attitude Era did great in viewership, barely financially survived then. So you can see that they adapted and do great even if ratings are way down from certain times.

Actually they did pretty good in the AE once it started going. Remember, revenue does not equal net income. WWE has been setting revenue records not net income records. This isn't that surprising considering the amount of stuff they do now and cost of production.

Someone tried to explain to me once just how the TV rating system worked, and it was damm complicated. For example it's almost impossible to tell how many people are actually watching the show, and how are they watching. Just because a show is on doesn't mean anyone is watching it. Also bars and restaurants who stream these events. Could be 10-500 people or anywhere inbetween.

As long as they get a ballpark figure I think they should be happy. No kidding that viewership has decreased and probably still will, but if they have a couple of million people watching it should be enough to keep them on the air. The only time Vince might care it when it comes to renewing the contract and the fight ensues over money.

Nielsen ratings are how we determine TV ratings. They do a bunch of statistical analysis stuff to determine who best represents the general population. They then give these people Nielsen boxes or have them record their viewing habits. That one person watching will be equivalent to x amount of people. There are problems with this. The Houston Astros once got a 0 TV rating in the city of Houston on opening day because no one with a box happened to watch.

Nielsen ratings (at least the ones we talk about on here) only cover the US.

I do not have a Nielsen box so I have no impact on TV ratings.

People who don't think WWE's TV ratings are important are fooling themselves. RAW and Smackdown power everything in the WWE ecosystem. The network, the merchandise, the live events, everything. Less eyeballs normally means less money. The reason they're making so much money is because they're gouging less fans for more money. They've opened up tons of revenue streams to hit the same people for tons of crap. They audience has shrunk and is shrinking. The network numbers, regardless of their spin isn't growing. That's not good. The longer you leak, the quicker you sink.

Then there's the next TV deal. Their deal with NBCU is by far their biggest stream. If they get a lowball deal the next time, they're in trouble. Bad press and stock drops follow. Then panic.

So yeah, it matters.

The Network numbers are actually good. They are at about what they could get even if they still had AE era ratings. Wrestling is a niche product.

Ratings do not mean as much as they used to (they aren't meaningless however). The environment today is much different from the AE. More channels, internet, more entertainment options, etc.. No one has been able to determine how much the internet has damaged TV ratings but it is probably significant. I have no doubt the US audience for watching Raw has dropped but there are many factors that have caused this. Product and 3 hours are only partial causes.

 

[Navi]

Nielsen ratings are how we determine TV ratings. They do a bunch of statistical analysis stuff to determine who best represents the general population. They then give these people Nielsen boxes or have them record their viewing habits. That one person watching will be equivalent to x amount of people. There are problems with this. The Houston Astros once got a 0 TV rating in the city of Houston on opening day because no one with a box happened to watch.

Nielsen ratings (at least the ones we talk about on here) only cover the US.

I do not have a Nielsen box so I have no impact on TV ratings.

Our house used to be an Nielsen house 20 odd years ago. We didn't have a box though, they used to send us a booklet once a month and we ticked off what shows we watched. They paid us one dollar, yes a check was enclosed for a dollar, and we sent the booklet back in a self addressed stamped envelope by a certain date. Don't know if they ever read it or not, but there was a place to put comments and my husband filled it out every week and mailed it in when we were supposed too.

Mind you there wasn't all the channels we get now-a-days and most homes only had one TV. That was back in the day when watching TV was regarded as family time, before the internet and cable was very limited. God it seems like forever now.

 

[ShinChan]

It does matter. However it's just significant, not as big as it was in the past and rightfully so.

But saying that it doesn't matter at all is wrong. See ratings for Raw and Smackdown which are either near Wrestlemania or comprise of stars like Brock Lesnar, The Undertaker etc and you'll see them stand out from the normal ratings. That's when wrestling is arguably most popular in the whole year and it shows easily in the output.

So, the role of ratings is still significant.

 

[#tamale]

Yes they do matter because of the value of the show to that network, and the advertising/sponsorship money it brings in. When advertising executives finally find a way to monetize their efforts through streaming services, cable will be dead, bit until then the WWE cares about maintaining steady ratings year in and year out.

NFL and Amazon Prime just announced their TNF streaming deal so the death of cable may come soon. Eventually others will follow suit. The WWE jumped ahead of this tremd so they should be ready for the change when the migration comes.

 

[ilapierre]

It's hard to say really. I mean, you could simply say that the popularity of WWE, the NFL, MBL, etc. are fading, yet these companies are still taking in hug amounts of revenue. The days of WWE drawing audiences of 5 to 6 million people each week on Raw are gone and aren't likely to be coming back and part of the reason it reached those heights in the first place is because of the Monday Night War. Pro wrestling was presented and characters were portrayed in ways that nobody'd ever seen before and a whole lot of people who probably weren't really long term fans started watching, enjoyed it and eventually moved onto other things as the Attitude Era was something of a fad. TV fads can last a handful of years, sometimes they last far less, but that's generally how it goes. The next to last season of Jersey Shore, for instance, was drawing between 6 to 7 million viewers for every new episode and even reruns were drawing big numbers; the last season of the show saw viewership go from 6 to 7 million to hovering around 2 million per new episode. By this time, the show had been on the air for a few years and a lot of viewers simply moved on.

As has been pointed out by the OP, there are different ways of watching TV now. You can use tablets, phones or what have you to watch TV, stream stuff like the WWE Network or record shows a season at a time and binge watch whenever you feel like, which is the new trend right now. TV won't ever completely go away just like DVDs and CDs haven't completely gone away even though you can download and stream movies or music.

Not counting DVR viewership, the average episodes of Raw and SmackDown Live draw about 3.2 and 2.67 million viewers and those are big numbers compared with most shows on basic cable. At any point through the given year, only a handful of shows on basic cable draw more like a couple of shows on Fox News, like Bill O'Reilly's show, Monday Night Football and an occasional basketball/baseball game if it's between two top teams. Even Monday Night Football is now only drawing usually a bit more than half of what it once did. Basketball and baseball rarely draw more than Raw and sometimes less than SmackDown Live yet they're still thriving and so is WWE. The company's brought in record revenue for the past 3 years in a row, I remember reading that WWE did in excess of $730 million for 2016. So they're making more money than ever and obviously have a pretty good handle on getting the most out of their fans, so when you're generated record revenues, turning significant profit and able to put said profits back into the company then it's hard to say that a company is in trouble.

How on Earth would a true fan of wrestling know all of this about the business side? It's as if this 'topic' was perfectly designed for you in order to convince us all that WWE is doing fantastic. People 'aren't' watching the product anymore because it's really hard to watch. Any true fan of wrestling knows that today's product hardly resembles what we all grew up watching.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

Yes.... we saw how important when the last TV deal wasn't as high as they hoped.

WWE relies on USA and the revenue generated by TV a LOT to keep the machine going. It covers a lot of their "fixed costs" for TV production for content they can then use on their own network. USA in effect is subsidising 205, NXT and RAW and Smackdown, with Sky and Hulu offsetting the rest.

The WWE Network isn't ready to solely have those shows and the only way they keep prominent on USA and Sky is to deliver ratings and "bang for buck" for said networks. That's what killed WCW - it wasn't the mismanagement but the sheer disinterest in having wrestling on TV. If ratings decline, that appetite will quickly spread to the USA board too.

Is it the be all and end all like it was 20 years ago, no... but ratings slides impact WWE's bottom line and profits majory... 20 years ago they weren't public so it was Vince's pockets that suffered in the slump and benefitted from the rise... now it's traded, they have to deliver those revenues and thus ratings, or they can lose their company or be forced to buy everyone out expensively... There were threats of this after the last TV deal didn't deliver what was talked up by Vince... he wouldn't escape that again.

 

[rokuma]

I'm glad someone asked this. Yes, TV ratings matter, but what I've been thinking about lately is the WWE's TV model. It almost seems like TV has taken a backseat to the events on the WWE network instead of building those events up. I wonder if weekly WWE TV becoming repetitive and unimaginative is a side effect of those events? The "PPVs" on the network are generally great quality and fun to watch, but Raw (at 3 hrs) is usually brutal to sit through week after week. Smackdown has been really good since the brand split though. I don't know. I just think maybe it's time for WWE to take another look at their TV model and maybe reimagine it. I don't know what that would be, but it doesn't really seem like they build towards the events on the network or at least not to the extent that they did in the 90s/early 2000s.