The GM situation and the Brands in general...

[healyz84]

Alright so I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I thought I would just shoot it out. What is the situation with the GM's of the brands? Raw really has not had a GM over a year now, except for Coach, who is really an executive assistant and not a GM. ECW is without a GM or any sort of authority figure say for McMahon making his random appearances. Smackdown has a GM in Teddy Long, but there has been talks of taking him out of this role and replacing him. What I am driving at is whether there is even a point for the GM now? In fact I am beginning to question the whole brand extension. If I remember, the brand extension was decided upon because the wwe had such an influx of wrestlers, and quite frankly not enough room to use them all. They had roughly 10-12 mega-stars at the time, people like Hogan, Rock, Austin, HHH, Undertaker and so on who were still wrestling. They also had a number of middle card wrestlers who were not being used, and this was largely because no room on the card. So the brand extension was made, with each brand having 40 wrestlers, and that was kept as the norm for a while. Now each brand had 4 of their own ppv's, plus the 4 major ppv's, and between these there was suppose to be a lot of time to develop good storylines and rivalries for the ppv's. Also, with such a smaller roster, many of the wrestlers deserving of a spot would be on the ppv. I will say that at first I was not happy with this, as at the time I didn't get Smackdown, so I missed out on seeing a lot of my fav's. Raw became my show. But then amazing stuff started happening, you had the GM idea being implemented, the brand drafts, the inter-promotional matches at WM and to a similar extent, Survivror Series. As long as the brands stayed separate, except for coming together for some extraordinary matches, this system would work.

Then ECW came into being again, and suddenly you had wrestlers appearing on a show one week, then somehow being part of the roster of another show the following week. There was no longer any storyline reasons for the switching. Then you started having wrestlers appear on both or all 3 shows to push their own feuds, such as the Hardy's/MNM, or Lashley/Umaga. Then comes the announcement that the all the ppv's are inter brand, which thusly means that only the top tier stars, or those stars with titles, will be involved in the ppv's, and the rest of the wrestlers are crap out of luck.

What I am getting at is that the brand extension idea is a joke now. The initial reason for having such an extension is now shot. There is such a mixture of stars on every show that it really makes you wonder whether there are separate brands anymore.

So what I think should happen, and maybe its just a natural progression, is that the whole brand extension idea is coming to an end. Maybe it will end in a few weeks(unlikely) or a few months(also unlikely). Maybe it'll take a year or still a couple of years down the line, but the fate of the separate brands appear to me to be pointing at ending. If you really look at, it is what the wwe needs. The situation in the wwe exists where there are no longer a large amount of wrestlers in the top eichelon of the megastars to really keep the brands separate. If you look at each brand, they are lacking the necessary amount of top heels or even top faces to keep the interest of fans. What you see is the same 2 or 3 wrestlers involved in main event match, and wrestlers who hold on to their brands titles for longer then in reality they should. In looking at the brands separately, on raw you have Cena, Micheals, Edge, Orton, HHH(when he is healthy again) and maybe Umaga. Smackdown has Undertaker, Batista, maybe King Booker, maybe Kennedy eventually, maybe Mysterio. ECW has Lashley. By combining the brands together, there can now be better feuds, more men in the main events, and the wrestlers who deserve to be in these spots will be in these spots.

The problems of course are numerous as well. For one the house show numbers will be lowered, as there would no longer be separate brand shows, and so wwe would lose out on a lot of money. I guess the only way to solve that would be to keep separate brands or have wrestlers be grouped into 2 groups for house shows. Another problem is development wrestlers, in that with so many stars again on a single brand, many of the development wrestlers will have a hard time cracking the roster, and if they do will have a hard time moving up. But again if a wrestler is that good enough to be on the main roster, they will get there. Finally many, many of the wrestlers, those middle to low cards, will lose out on tv time. But that could be solved by re-introducing Heat/Velocity on tv.

Again I think the brand situation is a joke, and that it is naturally progressing towards a single brand promotion once more. It is impossible to tell when this will happen, but it will happen sooner rather than later. And I think this is exactly what the wwe needs to add excitement and interest once more into their product.

So what do you all think about this?

 

[mork83]

I think that if TNA was bigger (or any) competition, they would look to end the brand extension and have bigger RAWs and Smackdowns. After WCW and ECW were gone, they had more talent and were able to have two watered down brands.

If the thought is that they will have too much talent and too little time, I don't know why they don't put more effort into Heat. I remember, before Smackdown, when Heat actually had good matches with big stars. Instead of Viscera vs. one the Highlanders, why not have mid - upper midcard talent on the show, if you can't fit them onto RAW or Smackdown?

I don't think they'll be ending the brand extension any time soon, because there is too much invested in it (house shows specifically), but I wouldn't be surprised if it slowly fades away. Like I said before, especially if TNA gets a two hour show and maybe signs a few more wrestlers away.

 

[WhiteWolf85]

i have to agree with you healyz84 i think that it is a joke aswell and that i hope it just merges into one single brand again insted of being 3 seperate promotions because the way things have been going for almost what almost 3 or 4 years now its been going that direction i would like to see it all just be one promotion again insted of split into 3 seperate brands

 

[Shadowmancer]

The end of the Brad extension is unlikely to occur for the reasoning that they have too many Wrestlers to do so. having the "big 9" spread out over the entire 3 brands without bring others into this is one of the reasons for the lack of Main-eventers. Splitting them to be absolutely seperate was good. It led to dream matches onlhappening at the big PPVs. If the PPV buy rate goes down then they have to try and get it up so doing wht they have done is probably going to end up harming the full Roster. Once they have ECW running properly with enough resources, thy should split ECW from Smackdown and only have them do small venues, while leaving the Arenas to RAW and Smackdown. The house shows aren't where they make the most money, but they make a majority on it at House shows through Merchandise sales and advertising on TV. This is why the Brand Extension will not change back to not having seperate brands, Revenue is the reason. While the Ratings have gone down during the Brand extension some of this may be as a result of a general disinteredness in Wrestling that occurs inbetween the Boom periods. The feuds between the Hardys and MNM was only brought about because of the wanting of people to se the Hardys back together, it grew out of the pre-existing feud between Jeff Hardy and Johnny Nitro and escalated with the Armageddon incident. Umaga/Bobby Lashley was originally just a BotB part, if itgets the title off of Bobby Lashley then all good. But those two feuds are exceptions to the rule and not the rule before Wrestlemania. Bringing Heat or Velocity back onto TV is not the best option because it could cause product saturation, something that would be bad for Pro Wrestling as a whole.
The only reason that it appears to be progressing towards a single brand is because of the attempts at trying to gain more purchasers of PPVs this is where the majority of WWE gets its Revenue from. But to add more excitement to its existing product, they need to be creative with the way that everything is presented to the fans. This will pick up when TNA eventually becomes a competitor to WWE. This is the driving reason for the lack of excitement WWE are not competing with anyone so they don't need to put there best foot forward.

 

[healyz84]

Yes I can totally understand that its revenue that runs the brand extension. With the brand extension, you have 2 wrestling venues in 2 separate cities virtually every night, with each of these house shows selling their merchandise and what not. Its not the ticket prices that get the revenue to the wwe, as house shows only get about 4000-5000 people usually with what about $20 a seat depending on where you sit. What this then relates to is just enough money to pay for the roster of wrestlers on a bi-weekly basis and to pay for the other main expenses(sites, setups, ect) and so the remaining revenue is for the most part profit, and of course with the wwe getting double profit from running 2 separate shows, they get more money.

But what I see is that since the brand extensions, house show numbers have been on a drastic declination. There was a period of about a year when they started to rebound(that was when wwe started filming the house shows, and they would sometimes have title changes at the shows) but then this went out the door and house show numbers went down again. With lower numbers of people coming out to the shows, this only helps to hinder the amount of merchandising the people buy. Simple marketing dictates less people = less sells.

I still think that ending the brand extension can fix this. Many people don't go to house shows because the wrestling itself is becoming stagnant. Why spend a lot of money going to a live show when you can tune into raw or smackdown and catch the same match. With the brand extensions, you can create dream matchups. But this effects what, 1 ppv buy in about 12, and so in actuality is quite an insignificant profit margin for the wwe. With the possibility of one dream match a year, you then have to go through the next 11 months with the same matches, such as Edge/Cena or Batista/Booker T to name a few. The only way that some of these feuds don't get so dragged out is because 1 of the wrestlers injure themself. So I say that ending brand extension and having all the wrestlers on 1 show again would end the stagnation, create a variety of more exciting, 'dream' matches, but having these dream matches happen with a little more regularity than what the chances there are for seeing them now. If you want some proof on how this will work, look at the acquisition of Pride fighting by the UFC. They now have the opportunity to stage some of the dream fights that fans of these promotions have been waiting for years to see. Thus you will probably see the buyrates go up, fans will be more into what they are seeing, and its good for all parties involved. Just a thought anyway...

 

[Sir Paul]

I think that the brand extension needs to be ended ASAP. People say that there are far too many wrestlers, I don't think that really is the case, there isn't nearly as many as when the brand extension first came in back in 2002.

If the extension did end, then not all the wrestlers have to appear on both Raw and Smackdown, for example Deuce and Domino (no offence to these guys) do not need to appear on both Raw and Smackdown each week do they? The WWE has shown in hte last few weeks that some superstars can appear on more than one show (Umaga, Lashley and the Hardys have been doing this for the last couple of months).

 

[The Canadian Crippler]

lol, that's cuz they are shoving the same guys down are throats 3 times a week....one thing i always wondered was if they DID get rid of the 3 brands then how many ppl would they get rid of and that's 7 hours they are putting on a week right? How long would THE show be...??? Would anyone really sit there for more than 2 hours and watch wwe? Especially when it's been getting crappier ever since the attitude era? I think that the reason there was brand extensions is because there was some sort of competition then...and with the ppv's, it gave u a reason to watch since you only got to see the top superstars from each one every other month...gave more time to make storylines also....instead of having the same 8 guys wrestling every month on every ppv...I think it's overkill really when I see lashley 3 times a week and they replay raw notes 2 times on ecw and yes i counted lol it's sad isnt it? and probobly 4 if not more on sd....I can't stand it!!! Push someone else!!! All the air time they are using on lashley is ridicoulus...can't spell i know...