WWE gears itself towards young adults and children who want casual hard hitting action. They want no match outside the main event and some sort of tag match at the halfway point to go for longer than 10 minutes. They want a lot of striking and flashy moves. However they take this circus on the road all year long so they want all of that without risking any kind of injury to their employees. For this reason there is minimal high flying or danger. WWE used to pride itself for having some of the best high flyers around, they brought people in specifically for it, they gave it center stage, now it's Evan Bourne and no-one else.
All of this speed and quickness cuts down on submissions because they take time. Very few submissions are locked straight in and there's an immediate tap-out. It requires extensive working of a body part, an understanding from the audience in regards to psychology, and multiple attempts at the move. Then when you have it in, there's a long struggle. Essentially WWE thinks this will bore the Jones family of California who would rather see big huge athletes smashing into each other as opposed to sweaty dudes rolling around on the floor.
PPVs see more submission orientated wrestling because while the casual fans make up the majority of the tv audience, I'd argue that it's more of the dedicated ones that are willing to pay to watch. Once you've paid for it it doesn't matter what they do, so they have longer matches, more submissions, the whole nine yards. During tv they have to keep it constantly exciting or risk the audience changing channels. If you decide to stop watching a PPV they don't give a damn, they've made their cash.
ROH fans are exclusively die-hards who understand and are patient enough to watch them working each other over so they use a very submission-orientated style. Almost every wrestler on their roster has a submission finisher to go along with a regular, and in most places some sort of top-rope move as well. It opens up more interesting and unusual match formats because you get excited as to what avenue they are going to take it.
TNA fans are somewhere in the middle so while they have very few submission victories (Angle, Joe and Sting are about it) they do incorporate submission moves into their matches more and definitely more high-flying than the WWE, but of course less than ROH.
It's all about the audiences and the workload of the three companies really. WWE wrestlers wrestle more matches than anyone, travel a hell of a lot and have the biggest audience so it just isn't smart for business for them to risk their health. ROH, as much of a dedicated fan as I am, have about 12 fans and have a mentality of going all-out every night because they're desperate for any new fans to become hooked. TNA is once again in the middle, larger audience than ROH, less matches, middle of the road.
