Pro Wrestling, sorry, "Sports Entertainment"'s place in entertainment

[Radical]

I think this would be a good time, in light of the report about WWE having one of its lowest rating weeks (both Raw and SmackDown) in months or years. Seems troubling considering it was fresh off WWE's second biggest PPV of the year, SummerSlam.

I may focus a lot of WWE in this thread but it is also open for discussion about other wrestling programs such as Lucha Underground, TNA, ROH and GFW and how they fit into the great, big category that is "Entertainment."

Here is my take on the situation:

First, let me talk about TV ratings. I think there are a lot of factors that go into the TV ratings situation for WWE. Honestly, WWE was smart to launch the WWE Network as an online streaming network since it is pretty much the wave of the future. I hear Global Force Wrestling and maybe Lucha Underground are trying to get onto Netflix and, again, it's smart because network and cable television is a harsh game for most shows.

Real sports still survive because they are real sports and if you like them, you like them and new fans happen all the time as kids grow up or a friend turns a friend onto it and it usually stays for their whole life. No WONDER NFL gets good ratings because you have all the fans who were fans since they were 8 who are 88 now and everyone in between. Most fans of NFL whenever they start being fans they will continue to be fans until they can literally no longer watch. How many lifelong fans are there of WWE who are in their 80s? Probably not nearly as much as real sports like NFL and MLB. WWE can easily turn off fans. Lots of fans are fans at a young age but once they get to high school or into their 20s they find WWE silly and even if they are people who will go in droves to see a comic book movie like Iron Man or Avengers, they still see WWE as silly and corny and have been turned off.

As for other shows on TV with high ratings like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc. Well, the thing is about these shows is that they have a limited run. Sure, the highly rated ones will go on for 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 seasons, which is very good for a TV show, but that's pretty much it! AND ask anyone, if they were fans of a show that ran about 8 seasons they will tell you all about "it was a lot better in the first few seasons."

Internet/info age has, I believe, forever changed how pro wrestling/sports entertainment will be viewed. It will be like any other niche genre or show. Hell's Kitchen and cooking shows have their niche audience, home renovation or home buying shows have their niche audience, kids cartoons have their niche audience, cartoons for more adult crowds (like Family Guy, Simpsons, etc.) have their niche audience, live-action Superhero shows have their niche audience and so on. Some of these fans do overlap and some of these shows will experience a spike in popularity but overall still stay a niche and never become something that is widely accepted and of interest to a majority of people.

Sorry, WWE, you aren't getting back to 10.0 ratings and beating Monday Night Football in viewership. You have to find your own way and your own happiness with the type of fans you will have. If you change too much you will lose your hardcore fans, which you desperately need.

For WWE, I think they could change a few things. Raw is too long. 3 hours is too long for sports entertainment in this day and age. Too many commercials and too long of talking segments take even the most hardcore fans out of the mood and too eager to flip the channel to something else.

SmackDown, let's face it, is the B show and will always be the B show and it will go up and down in ratings throughout the year. Is there a rhyme or a reason for the highs and lows of this pre-taped B WWE show? I honestly don't even know. This week had the Dudley's advertised and more on that new Wyatt member and I actually thought that sounded like a good SmackDown to tune into. I actually didn't get to see it because I was doing something else and you know what? Maybe that's just what happened to others. They wouldn't have minded to tune into SmackDown but just didn't so ratings weren't great.

But WWE's YouTube channel regularly gets over 100,000 views on many of its match highlights and other videos and I'm sure gets watched a fair bit in replays online but that doesn't help the TV stations but it does show a certain interest in the product, just in a different way these days.

I criticize WWE a lot but they are actually still doing a lot of things right. They have a pretty successful online WWE Network that one day may include the only way to watch Raw and SmackDown and they have pretty solid Live event and Raw and SmackDown show attendance. Nothing quite like the Attitude Era but that's really not coming back. They are doing consistent numbers for years, though. Their merchandise is still being sold well, it seems and apparently they get revenue from those crappy WWE films still. Lol.

The thing about WWE is that they try to have something for everyone and in today's world where DVR'ing something or watching it later online is so easy, and watching it live is tougher because of how many commercials there are they are basically making it hard on their fans to watch their show live.


So the questions to you are:

What do you think pro wrestling/sports entertainment's place is in entertainment now and going forward?

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Pro wrestling, sports entertainment, whatever you want to call it, it's the same thing. I know some internet fans like to try to draw some sort of distinction by labeling WWE sports entertainment and ROH pro wrestling, but it's nonsensical really. Every pro wrestling company of the past 30 years or so, at least, has had its own variation of "sports entertainment" segments, characters or matches.

However, as to what it's place in the overall place of entertainment is, I honestly think that it's higher up than it was 20 years ago because television itself has changed to such a huge degree and there's such a big decline in the overall quality of television. Twenty years ago, pro wrestling was always seen as a cheap form of entertainment that allowed the cable networks to draw big numbers. Now, these numbers even at the height of the Attitude Era never came close to equaling that of shows like Friends or NYPD Blue, which were drawing an average of roughly 30 million and 16 million viewers per episode during their 2nd seasons in the United States, but they were still strong considering that this was a time in which cable television was viewed as sort of a 2nd class citizen in television; it was important, but it simply didn't have the prestige of the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC because of the huge numbers they drew during prime time.

However, the landscape of American television has changed radically over the past 15 years or so in particular. As I alluded to, some would argue that TV quality overall has seriously declined and I'd say a good 75% of today's TV line up, whether it's on cable or broadcast networks, is composed of bland reality shows that people watch when there's nothing else on. You still have your traditional sitcoms and dramas airing, but cable television has really come on strong the past 10 years as a place where people can find shows that are more cutting edge that steer clear from the normal formula of comedy and drama like Sons of Anarchy, Girls, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead and some others while finding more likeable characters in the reality show area like in Duck Dynasty.

Pro wrestling is always going to be seen as low brow entertainment but, in a lot of ways, society itself seems to be trying to somehow balance low brow with political correctness and failing miserably. I mean, the leading Republican candidate for President of the United States is an arrogant toerag who treats it like some sort of carnival sideshow at Coney Island and unable to do anything besides fling juvenile insults towards his opponents, yet droves of people are cheering for him like crazy. Twenty years ago, Donald Trump would've been mocked to such an extraordinary degree that even he would've been embarrassed.

Pro wrestling, WWE in particular since WWE is synonymous with pro wrestling in the minds of most Americans, wrestling fans and non wrestling fans alike, will be always be viewed as sort of a trashy, tongue-in-cheek little psycho drama because no matter how much you try to dress it up, no matter what sort of mainstream coverage you might get from the media, it's still a bunch of people dressing in skimpy and skin tight clothing, adopting fictional or exaggerated personalities who engage in fictional rivalries that culminate in choreographed fights with predetermined outcomes. That's not to belittle the physical, emotional and mental toll that it takes on wrestlers, that's not fake in the least, but it's a dramatic show with comedic overtones masquerading as a legitimate sport. The various TV executives may silently and privately mock the wrestling companies, but they'll most definitely eat up the ratings and sponsorship money these pro wrestling companies deliver to them with a nice big shit eating grin. It's never going to be held in revered esteem and it'll always be sort of looked at as the dumbest thing imaginable in the eyes of many non-fans who're unable or unwilling to grasp the simple concept that it's all about entertainment just as much as any other show on television.

 

[Mustang Sally]

What do you think pro wrestling/sports entertainment's place is in entertainment now and going forward?

I think pro wrestling is the modern version of Vaudeville, which was a form of stage entertainment in the early 1900's that featured acts with a little bit of everything. You name it, they had it.....singing, dancing, comedy, juggling, skits, magic, etc etc.......and the audience loved it. Naturally, the advent of television killed Vaudeville.

We've had Vaudeville on TV for the past 20 years, in the form of pro wrestling. It's got everything; the crowds, music, sit-com type situational theater, surprises, fireworks, drama etc etc.....and some damn good ring work by people who are often shedding real blood even while being accused of working in a 'fake' form of entertainment.

Pro wrestling was reality TV before reality TV was even invented.

Why does it have such a small niche of followers? Probably because of the lingering image of pro wrestling as contested by big-bellied men exchanging boring holds in smoke-filled arenas. All that made wrestling something 'normal' folks wouldn't watch. You were 'supposed' to look down on it....and we know how strong peer pressure can be.

People of my gender? In private conversation, I've spoken to many women who have seen pro wrestling yet didn't want to admit it. They could talk about things they saw in a match on TV, even while proclaiming that they 'never' watched. As a woman functioning on a male-dominated forum, I like wrestling and openly admit it; that makes me an anomaly, for sure.......but it doesn't bother me a bit, and I enjoy participating on the WZ board.

To my mind, wrestling is already doing what it can do. There's so much room for new ideas and methods within the structure of what this form of entertainment already is. Although many on this forum complain that WWE never comes up with anything new, I find that they certainly do.....and given how difficult that is to do in a 'sport' in which virtually everything has already been done, finding new ways to present it is a hell of a task.

Still, it's easy to see why many folks prefer sports like football. There's a winner and a loser; you know who the winner is because that team scored more points than the other. Pro wrestling will never be like that. Can you imagine if there was actual betting on WWE contests? Some might justify it because although the match endings are pre-scripted, we don't know who is scheduled to win.

But how does a bet pay off if the favorite loses by disqualification or outside interference? What a circus it would become! My guess is that when Las Vegas starts getting interested in taking bets on the outcome of Wrestlemania matches, the damn 'sport' will become as mainstream as other real sports. Sheesh.

Meanwhile, pro wrestling is a form of entertainment like no other. Trying to find ways to appeal to audiences it doesn't have is the best destiny it can attempt to fulfill.

 

[lil steroid meat]

It's a niche and viewed as low-brow entertainment.

And it kind of is. It's like a live cartoon.

Kids like it because it's a mix of sports and drama. Grown men like it because they like going on the internet every Monday at 11:30 PM and writing about what they would do if they ran it.

 

[Just Do It]

The general public thinks it's a bit of silly fun, and it is. To us lot, it's greater than that, there are hidden depths, and there are. I think certain things are dumb: Star Trek, Football, etc etc, but I'd never be ignorant to say they are rubbish, they're just not for me. Wrestling fans often try to swim up stream when it comes to defending the product.