Reason for WWE viewership decreases

[Radical]

To illustrate my point I will start by using a quote from a very well written forum member taken from another thread that has to do with this topic.

Last night, it took three hours to tell 30 minutes of wrestling stories. There's my problem in a nutshell. -

Take away the talking segments and two wrestling matches could happen in its place. I'm not even joking, there was a boatload of yapping last night. None of it remotely entertaining. A few words in a backstage segment would cover half of it. Take notes from NXT programming. After ONE HOUR of wrestling it feels like they had more matches on the show than RAW manages in THREE HOURS.

Great points right there.

Raw is really hardly watchable live anymore. Way too many commercials. They can barely get through a jobber match without going to a commercial. That really takes you out of the show.

Plus, now with WWE basically having their own show and the matches in little highlight clips on YouTube the next day it is a lot easier to catch up on what has happened in a short amount of time and if there happens to be a match or two you want to see in full - well I'm sure you could find a pretty easy way of watching it in full on the Internet.

As much as WWE arguably has better talent and characters than they ever had, and more time on the show to showcase their talent, they honestly do a pretty poor job of it.

Now I know WWE is all about what brings in money. I know that is why commercials on the show are worse than mosquitoes in July but can WWE even be surprised why their viewership numbers are going down? Honestly, I don't think it has to do much with the talent or that Reigns is Champion - maybe a little to do with the lack of compelling storylines for ALL of the championships and key characters on the show - but I think a good deal has to do with the fact that WWE have made it very frustrating to stick it out and watch all three hours of Raw because of the crazy amount of commercials!

In today's day and age of Smart phones, devices, DVRs, Internet, YouTube, streaming, etc. why wouldn't people be decreasing the time they spend tuning into a show that is THREE hours? That is much more than other highly popular shows like Game of Thrones or Walking Dead - even sports games like NBA or NHL can end in about two and a half hours. Why wouldn't people be turned off of a show they like because the ratio of commercials to actual show and then the portion of that show that is really entertaining is hovering around 15-20%?

Here's the thing, WWE isn't going to stop the crazy amount of commercials anytime soon. They are about making money and commercials are big money and they are a public company and even if their viewership is going down it is still near the highest viewed show on Monday in the key demo.

What I'm suggesting is that WWE is pushing away their live home viewing audience, even the hardcore or fringe hardcore fans because of the amount of commercials and lack of mostly compelling content for most of the show.


My questions to you:

Do you think WWE is pushing away their willing live TV viewers because of the insane amount of commercials shown during the three hour broadcast?

Do you think there is a equal or bigger factor in the decreasing viewership numbers such as lack of consistent storyline for all of the Titles and major characters on the show?

Any other general thoughts or opinions about this topic?

 

[Navi]

Well first of all I'm no expert on a lot of the things the OP brought up, and I'm only speaking as a fan of wrestling here.

First of all I still don't get the bitching about a three hour RAW. This isn't something that just happened, RAW has been 3 hours now for the last almost 4 years, and only the last year or so people have started to complain. So maybe it's time to look at what's happened to the show since that point, when people didn't really mind it before.

My guess is the Authority angle which has been so prominent has reached it's sell by date, and time to move on with it. Also for the last couple of years the WWE has basically focused on one guy and to the detriment of everyone else. Now that he has the title, we are seeing movement within the roster that should have happened a long time ago.

2015 was riddled with injuries to a lot of the top names, so fans of their's may also have turned out when they saw their favourites weren't going to be around.

The biggest issue I have is not the program runs three hours, because in that time I do things when matches are on that I don't care about. I only really watch the matches I do care about. And by reading some of the comments on the LD threads other's do the same thing. The issue is the product was for a long time stale. Same guys each week fighting the other same guys each week. It was very predictable and in a way still is, but now we are seeing some new fresh faces in the mix.

It might have come a little too late for some as a few of my friends who were die hard WWE fans gave up on it. I'm not ready to do that quite yet, but it's each to his own.

Not sure if I answered any of your questions, but a three hour RAW isn't the biggest problem the WWE has right now, booking is, and until that is sorted, they could cut it back to one hour and it still wouldn't make a difference.

 

[Rayne]

The WWE isn't (directly) to blame for their being "too many commercials", that's a decision USA made. Which also isn't to put the blame on USA, as they're responding to an overall trend in cable viewership. If you think there's too much advertising now, you'd better strap in, because it's going to get worse.

Hanging over any television viewership discussion these days is the ongoing contraction of the cable television industry, as customers unbundle and purchase competing products like Netflix. We're in the habit here of comparing professional wrestling to itself here, and professional wrestling is doing a little worse than other forms of media, but this is an industrywide problem. If you have fewer people watching the advertising, you're getting paid less for it. If you're getting less per second of advertising, and you don't expect viewership to turn around long-term, the solution is to sell more minutes of advertising.

This will not change anytime soon; this is more about the slow death of the cable industry. (Keyword: slow. Cable won't die for decades, but it'll be that quaint thing only old people have in twenty years.)

This is what Triple H was talking about when he stated a few months ago that the WWE wasn't concerned about falling ratings; while I'm sure he was underselling the impact, people have seen the current situation coming for years, and this was the driving force behind the creation of the WWE Network. The WWE had to reduce their dependence on the cable television industry, or they'd shrink along with them.

The story is much more complicated than being a case of "I don't like this booking", which is why you aren't seeing the WWE react with shock booking and Big Surprises; to them, it's business as usual. That being said, I couldn't possibly find enough glue to sniff to get me through three hours of RAW.

 

[Headman]

I've been complaining about the 3 hour format since it debuted. It's just too much content to fill and too much of it feels like filler. By the time the main event comes around I don't even care anymore. I've gone to DVRing it so I can fast forward through a lot of the show just to get close to a pace I can follow. If I were the WWE I would go back to 2 hours of RAW followed by a one our "Talking Dead" type show hosted by Seth Green or Freddie Prinze Jr or somebody like that. That way they can keep the extra hour without screwing up the pace of the actual show.

 

[bittermang]

I made this comment on another forum, but a week or so ago the Chicago Blackhawks vs the St. Louis Blues were tied in the third peroid of game seven, going in to overtime. Or, you could stick around and watch another rendition of Alberto del Rio vs Roman Reigns. You know Roman isn't going to drop the title to Alberto in the go home show to Payback. Meanwhile, which team is advancing to the second round, between two long standing midwest rivals. If you're a hockey fan at all, the choice is clear. Or maybe you were catching an NBA game, since they're also in their postseason.

I think you're right about the commercials, and Good ol JR even touched on this a while ago. Raw seems to go out of its way to disengage you, across its three hour span. It gives you so many opportunities, and some nights reasons, to channel surf. And when I do channel surf and find something with the nail biting excitement of a tied game seven hockey game, I'm probably not coming back.

They want to insist this is a new era, but it's stuck in the same old pattern that isn't working anymore, with the same contrived nonsense. The faces are different, and the names have changed, but the game is the same. I guess it had been too long since WWE had referenced Montreal, so time to run the angle again at Payback. Once Stephanie came out to make the #WWETitle match a no DQ, we're all just sitting around waiting for Gallows and Anderson to show up like we all knew they would.

If the ratings are dropping, it's because people are tuning out. If people are tuning out, they're not engaged with the product at an emotional level. Who cares? I'll just read the recaps later. There hasn't been anything post 'Mania that has demanded that I watch it live as it happens. That's bad for a show that's built its pedigree on being Raw, live, as it happens.

 

[WorstWrestlingExcrement]

Radical good point and I ll say many people cannot sit through a 3 hour comedy cartoon crap show more talking and less wrestling matches. The 3 hour has gone booooring. Many fans get tiresome and bored and with todays technology I usually go and check the wrestling news of the results or head to you tube also. wwe is willing pushing away their willing live TV viewers away because of the insane amount of commercials. Whatever happened to commercial free? I recall WCW did a few commercial free shows

Shoving Roman Reigns down everyones throats seems to be frustrating and wwe has it as a temporary setback till john semen returns and takes over then it is even worse
Lack of Randy Orton and Seth Rollins make wwe boring and unwatchable!

 

[arashikage20]

If memory serves (and I could be wrong as it was a number of years ago), USA pushed WWE into making Raw three hours long. This was due to the fact that despite what is going on in today's TV world (I will touch on that in a moment), Raw is still one of cable TV's top shows. USA is just riding the cash cow that can go with it. Yes WWE makes money from the advertisers and a longer show means more of them. However, they don't get all of the revenue from it as USA Network takes a chunk of it so that they too can make their money.

Now to touch on the current TV world. Even though networks still treat ratings as the end all for the popularity of TV shows, it is a very out-dated system. Ratings don't account for people who watch later, whether it is via DVR or streaming services (Hulu, Netflix, etc.). That is the only way to get a true feeling of how a show is truly being watched.

As for the current product itself, as others have said, 2015 was a bad year for top level injuries. Yes the product did get stale as well. However, I have found the shows a lot more enjoyable since WM. In ring promo times have been cut down. What they used to use 20 minutes for, they are doing it in about 10. They seem to have gone back to a more basic booking style. Guess what? It works. This is wrestling, you don't need 15 layers to a storyline to make it good and progress. Look at how they have made KO and Sami so personal. Good video packaging to make it feel personal. Getting involved with each other's matches continue to make it personal. Simple is better.

I guess the bottom line to what I am saying is that ratings shouldn't be the end all be all for a show, no matter what genre it is from. There are just too many other ways to watch.

 

[Azane]

Commercials are about the same as they've always been, their placement can be annoying now, but I wouldn't call it an insane amount.

Ratings have dropped because of all the factors you said, but also, there's literally just less people watching, either the viewerbase from when wrestling's popularity exploded in 97-99 have moved on, or it's because the show is really just less interesting overall. RAW has very few MUST SEE moments nowadays, Austin showing up in a beer truck, the backstage brawls over the hardcore title, sacrificing virgins on a cross in front of 15000 people. We don't see anything must see, nothing unexpected happens, the most exciting thing that happened on this weeks RAW was a potted plant got smashed.

There's no incentive to watch live wrestling when there's never anything exciting happening. If we're the speak of the actual wrestling itself, it's so watered down to the point none of the matches matter, the routines changed to faces having their 5 moves of doom, and heels dominating, which is why heels keep getting cheered, because the heels get to show off their entire movesets.

And finally, WWE is flat out NOT listening, they've had a face at the top for 6 months now, who gets completely and unanimously booed TO THE POINT, they have to mute the sound mics whenever he enters the arena. It's not a wonder why their ratings keep dropping. Take it further back, and they've been doing it for 10 years prior with Cena, but I'll be the first to admit, at least Cena's character evolved to be entertaining after the whole "THE CHAMP IS HERE, I NEVER LOSE" attitude changed.

Oh, and storyline consistency, I'm still really upset about the Undertaker Shane Storyline, where they basically had both men win, just because Vince Booked himself into a corner with Taker's legacy being pooed on, if he lost to a non-wrestler at WM, so he gave Taker the win, but booked the rest of it like Shane had won. Making matches ESPECIALLY Wrestlemania matches not matter is one of the things that makes me keep tuning out of wrestling for months at a time.

 

[Xemmy]

I think there are other factors. I cut the cord years ago, and I know some people have as well. If RAW was on the WWE Network, I'd probably skim through it there, and they'd get their views from me, and a fair percentage of people that also watch RAW through other means. It should be noted however, that I would have still have to skim through. As silly as it is, the only backstage segments I've managed to sit through lately involve Goldust and R-Truth. And that's pretty damn sad. It's a routine. I skim and I skim, drop in for a little Kevin Owens and Cesaro, skim skim, watch The New Day, and then depending on whether or not the main event is interesting, I might watch it, or skip to the end. I skim through 3 hours of Raw to watch 3 or 4 things.

Stephanie McMahon's a decent heel. But Jesus we've seen so much of her that I'll avoid watching Shane just to avoid her. Which means I've consistently skipped the first 20 minutes of Raw for the last 6 months or so. God bless her, I'm sure she's a nice lady, but it's just not fresh anymore.

Point is. It's not just one thing. There are several factors. Not all of which are WWE's fault. Hell, the last couple of Raws, establishing new stars, have actually made me excited. But it's making me think it's time to watch NXT on a more consistent basis.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

They're all valid points on this thread but at this point let face it, the only fans that WWE is losing in the ratings are the casual fans. They know damn well that they could do the most unwatchable 3 hour plus show and the IWC will watch it anyway simply so that they can bitch about it on wrestling forums and on social media after.

So WWE also knows that the live events are were the casual fans are coming. They don'T care really about the ratings anymore because they get paid no matter what the ratings are.

In the end, if fans are still buying tickets to go to a raw tapings or any other live events, WWE will be happy because that'S they're bread and butter. They know they got the IWC watching every single monday and that'S not going to change anytime soon no matter how good or bad the show is.

 

[Navi]

And don't forget that the major league baseball season has just started, the NHL are in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the NBA is also going into it's post season. So there is a lot of other options out there for sports minded people to watch. The warm weather is also coming to parts of North America and people are getting out and about rather than sitting home and watching a wrestling show.

 

[SmattyG]

RAW airs live in Australia on Tuesday mornings at 10am. Tuesday is my day off, so I usually do my shopping and some other stuff before settling down to watch the DVR of RAW at about midday.

By the time I skip the commercials, the jobber matches, the shilling, the recaps and the in ring rants, I can usually catch up before the show ends at 1pm.

 

[yourdamnluck]

3 hours is a lot of time especially when people have jobs, social lives and are interested in other sports.
A wrestler should not be in more than 2 singles match a month including the one at ppv. 3 hours just over-exposes them and adds to injury risk.
I'd prefer a 2 hour raw with less commercials. It'll keep all of them fresh and interesting.
That said, the current roster is quite entertaining but you have to watch something else during the breaks.

 

[SuperTaco]

It's been a very long time since I've been able to sit through an entire 3 hour Raw.

In that 3 hours, a person can do so many other things. That's three to six episodes of a show you may need to catch up on, or a long and exciting gaming session with friends, or six to eight episodes of anime, or a playoff game in a major sport.

Not to mention everything else mentioned in this thread. When I watch Raw I feel like I'm just waiting around for the main event, because 90% of the rest of the show is filler or junk. I just don't care enough to stick with it anymore.

I'd love if the show was 2 hours and they opened every week with a match FIRST, before any promo. We do not need the Authority to come to the ring and waste our time just so they can say "Welcome to Monday Night Raw! We are the Authority and we always do what's best for business. See ya in an hour!"

I dunno. Lately I've been ditching the oily men in tights for cute girls in swim wear. Much nicer on the eyes.

 

[Radical]

I definitely agree with the comment of the member who referenced good ol' JR saying that WWE seems to be going out of its way to disengage its audience.

I know that it isn't JUST WWE deciding to have so many commercials but the placement of the commercials is troubling. Could they not just put more commercials in AFTER a match and the set up segment for the next match? I mean we all know there has to be commercials and we all are prepared for commercials after a match but when the match is ON we should not be taken away from it.

This may be a stretch for the main event which can go 20-30 mins including entrances but even for matches that go 15 mins. I'm sure we would be more likely to stay tuned if we didn't get taken away from the match 5 or 10 minutes in.

That's the part where WWE is "trying to disengage their audience" because I'm sure a lot of people see the commercial coming in the middle of a match and just channel surf or get tired of all the commercials and just do something else, especially if the match or show isn't really "MUST SEE."

If you think about it, unless you are really a fan of a certain wrestler and you want to watch the show to see their match, then why would you sit through the whole show? Why not just wait until the main event.

The show doesn't give you much indication about the storylines that will occur or reasons to care. Then they throw something out there out of the blue and THEN expect you to care.