Ratings are going up. Is the Brand Split working?

[Richard Blonoff]

http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2016/0831/617119/wwe-raw-posts-best-rating-since-mitb-fallout/

http://www.cagesideseats.com/2016/8...16-viewership-highest-since-brand-split-draft

So a couple of reports in the last few days show that ratings for both Raw and Smackdown are on the rise, with Monday's Raw, featuring a fatal four way for the vacant Universal Title as the main event, being the highest rated show since the post Money in the Bank PPV show.

Smackdown posted their best rating since the draft Tuesday night, anchored by the Miz/Daniel Bryan fallout and a Dean Ambrose/Baron Corbin main event.

Smackdown remained the second most viewed show on Tuesday night, while Raw remained the most viewed show on Monday night.

So I ask, do rising ratings mean the Brand Split is working? Also, with the approach of Monday Night Football, do you see the Raw ratings staying consistent?

 

[Deoxyribonucleic A.C.I.D.]

For Smackdown it is and it's not really a surpise. It's the show where the big names like Cena, Orton are and plus other wrestlers with many fans like Ambrose and Styles. Plus Smackdown puts a consistent story through their entire show. Although the Miz promo definately worked for them, but IMO they failed to utilize it, to think outside the box. If a guy that hasn't watched wrestling for a long time, went into Smackdown after watching Miz's promo (and I'm sure many people did that) and he saw Ziggler as the payoff, he'd be dissapointed. However I can't really argue because Smackdown has been consistent. No boring shows.. but they really need to utilize opportunities like this better.

As far as RAW goes, RAW was just hype this week. But this also shows that the Universal Championship is being seen as a world title by the fans, since they watched, which is a great thing. RAW will be high next week as well. BUT again, they really need to step up the game on the writing department from now on, not just on the main event, on every level. SD has every superstar doing something every week, where on RAW, important guys like US Champ Rusev and Sami Zayn haven't been in something worthwhile since the draft began.

Rating going up this week is nothing really, it was just hype. WWE can't have hype shows every week though. They need consistency. With consistency and some hype shows every couple PPVs, ratings will only keep going up (not on weekly basis, but in average of every month).

As far as MNF is involved: 5 years ago MNF still existed right? RAW was pulling high 3s then. Now it's high 2s. And I'm sure it existed 10 years ago, when they were pulling high 4s. Sure, most people would DVR RAW and watch it later and watch the live football, but since the WWE was able to hang in there those years back, why wouldn't it accomplish it today?

 

[Dagger Dias]

The new brand split is succeeding so far. I have not been this interested in BOTH shows in an extremely long time. The introduction of new titles has provided new opportunities for competitors who otherwise would be stuck in meaningless feuds and/or doing absolutely nothing relevant. In the long run it can only get better. Keep building the new rosters and new title structure, the Big 4 will all mean so much more again down the line. Sure we just had Summerslam but we are about to enter the monthly setup of a Raw exclusive show and a Smackdown exclusive show, we will not have another dual branded PPV until Survivor Series.

Smackdown has benefited the most. When was the last time ANYBODY cared about Smackdown? Before the new brand split Smackdown was just random rematches of people we just saw on Raw earlier in the week and annoying recaps. It was a way to spend time when bored later in the week, and nothing more. The show had been slowly dying ever since 2011 when the last brand split ended. NOW, however, it's exciting again. I'm genuinely interested in tuning into the blue brand to see what will happen. Other fans are too. They are making people care again instead of just going through the motions until big PPV events. Yes, it has been a success so far. If they keep the momentum they have had and stay in the direction they are going then it will be an even bigger success.

 

[Azane]

I think it's less to do with the brand split itself working, and just has to do with an overall quality increase.

Smackdown of course, felt like it was never worth watching, it's been Sunday Night Heat, or Thursday Night Thunder for years, and any change to it was a positive change. So Smackdown super benefits from the shake up. I've found Smackdown's storytelling to be miles ahead of Raw's with the exception of the main event booking.

Main Event wise, the RAW top card has been sizzling hot for the past couple months, and it's made the last hour bearable, but the first 2 hours? oh boy, they've been awful on average, like watching Smackdown again makes me really appreciate the 2 hour shows being way better booked.

Monday Night Football is definitely cannibalizing the ratings, and I think it's Smackdown's time to truly shine. We'll see though, Kevin Owens has a lot of interesting matchups that could soften the Football blows to the product.

 

[hollowpoint]

The Brand split is definitely working especially for Smackdown simply due to the fact that you see guys in prominent roles who would normally be like a fish out of water. The Miz is a prime example of this. Although nothing really came from that awesome promo on Talking Smack, everyone is talking about him and what he did. Dean Ambrose is another benefactor. He's gotten more time to show an actual personality than he would otherwise get if the shows were with combined rosters. Not to mention all of the tag teams who now get a chance to fight for a brand new tag team championship on SD! American Alpha is seen as a favorite. So in a nutshell, YES, the brand split has done wonders for the WWE. Smackdown sure appreciates it.

 

[Charismatic Enigma]

I think any success that comes from this period will of course be attributed to the brand split, but in actuality the brand split had nothing to do with it.

Smackdown pre-split sucked. It was taped, nothing of consequence ever happened on the show, it showed tons of Raw replays, and the crowd noise was piped in. Add on to that, Raw already felt insufferable at 3 hours, why would you want 2 more hours of basically the same thing, but worse?

Enter: brand split.

Now let me ask you with WWE already producing 5 hours of content between the two shows, what stopped them before from putting guys like Owens, Ziggler, AJ, etc. in the main event? Nothing! What stopped them from pushing Balor, bringing back Jinder, Hawkins, Headbangers, Shelton (attempt to anyway), calling up Bayley, etc? Nothing!

WWE knows when they are making compelling programming, and when they are phoning it in, and they seem to be able to turn it on whenever they feel like it. This is the same reason why the lead in to WM and SS, always seem to be better than the rest of the year, or why the post WM Raw is always good, because they choose for it to be.

The brand split feels fresh right now because they are giving opportunities to people that previously hadn't, because there are new entrance ways, it brought back Foley and Bryan, gave us new graphics, ring ropes, theme songs, etc. but again I ask, did the brand need to split for any of this to occur?

 

[S.J. Maximus]

I want to continue to reiterate the main points that almost every poster has said on here:

1. The brand extension helped Smackdown dramatically improve - it has transformed from an afterthought recap to arguably the best show in the biggest wrestling company in the world.

2. RAW has improved as well, but it appears to be a much more top-heavy show. The main event scene is great, they probably have the top acts in each division (New Day & The Club, Charlote & Sasha) but SD uses their roster in a much better fashion that RAW. Guys like Sami Zayn, Rusev, Cesaro, and many more are just floating while people like Heath Slater, Apollo Crews, and Bray Wyatt are getting very consistent air time on the blue brand.

I think most importantly, this 'new era' has completely been exactly what it promised: a new spin for WWE. I highly doubt anyone during this time last year would've predicted Finn Balor becoming a world champion at SummerSlam while Ziggler and Ambrose battle for the other world title. They are giving the non-conventional stars a chance to shine and finally giving women time to go in the ring. Tag team wrestling is important again, they have addressed almost every single one of the booking flaws that have dogged them this decade. It's exciting and unpredictable so we are seeing a spike in ratings.

In terms of WWE being able to maintain these ratings, I have no clue. MNF will absolutely take away a portion of the audience there should be no debate there. Football is the most popular sport in this country and fantasy football is a trending phenomenon that turns non-fans into reliable viewers. I personally am in a few leagues myself so I cannot promise I won't be flipping back and forth once the season starts up. There's only so long you can be unpredictable before either becoming predictable or making a product that is constantly just swerving to produce shock value television (fuck you Vince Russo). As long as WWE stays true to this course and provides us logical entertaining storylines I think the ratings will be just fine- they have a lot of talent on these shows these days.

 

[Wrestlingaholic]

Another thing WWE are doing well at the moment is trying their best to NOT present one show as better than the other. Even little things by having the new titles look identical to the current titles, but with a different colour scheme. When Vince McMahon spoke on to about the two shows competing, I bet most on here (I know I did) just assumed it was hyperbole, but that Raw would always be treated and presented as the premiere show. That hasn't happened. Having the one cross-brand match at Summerslam main event the show. Little things like that help. People therefore have a reason to tune in to BOTH shows.

Will this mini-Renaissance continue once the NFL season gets underway? Unlikely, but then I've said on here before how people get too caught up in the ratings. The likes of Russon and Madden, people who routinely bash wrestling as their raisin-detre, constantly use low ratings as a stick to beat WWE with, ignoring that both Raw and Smackdown were still amongst the highest watched programmed on this. People like Vince and Eric Bischoff, however, have rightly stated that outright tv ratings are not the best guide anymore, as to vieiwing habits change. Just because less people are watching wrestling on tv love doesn't mean that people aren't watching wrestling full stop. You then have the live sports factor. Dress it up however you want to, but wrestling is a form of serial drama (soap opera for those in the UK); I call it extreme theatre. Like a dvd of a film, or like Netflix, you can dip in and out and watch when you want. Live sport just isn't the same. I've watched plenty on delay - I watched 63/64 matches of FIFA's soccer World Cup in Brazil in 2014, many of them on catch-up tv due to working. But it's not the same. It's not a tv series where you can miss a few weeks episodes and then binge-watch to catch up. It's something which is far better consumed live.

A lot of WWE (and wrestling generally) bashers fail to see this. But that is the number 1 reason why live tv ratings will inevitably flag when the NFL begins again.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I don't know if it's so much the brand split itself rather than just ultimately just a nice creative shake up.

Raw is still the show were more "big things" happen while SmackDown Live is a show that does seem to present more of an opportunity for wrestlers who're fresh faces and/or lower on the card to have more opportunities than on Raw. Raw is going to be the flagship show of WWE no matter what, that's almost impossible to change, but SmackDown Live is now a live show and that helps out tremendously because you can't simply read spoilers late Tuesday night or on Wednesday to find out what happened. I didn't do that myself and it helped me to find SmackDown more entertaining but too many net fans like their spoilers and going live was the only way to counter it.

I do think the brand split is succeeding so far in helping each show and brand genuinely feel different. They're not really trying to present one show as really being superior to the other; I mean you do have both brands putting themselves over, just as they should, without having commentators say anything that degrades the other show.

As far as Monday Night Football goes, there's not really anything WWE can do to counter it. Raw will draw some low numbers at times but, then again, you also have to factor in DVR viewership into things and that's also changed the impact ratings have to a pretty significant degree. During the Olympics, for example, you'd frequently have 20+ million people tune on on Monday nights to watch what was going on in primetime, yet some of those viewers would be recording Raw simultaneously to watch later on. I'm not really all that sure why so many people watch the Olympics; it's not as though there are a whole helluva lot of people, here in the United States at least, that give a crap about the vast majority of those sports except for a couple of weeks every four years.

 

[King Patrick Star]

Before the 2016 Brand Split, we had 5 hours of WWE TV, 3 hours live and 2 hours taped. After the Brand Split, we have 3 hours of Raw and 2 hours of Smackdown, separately. In my opinion, the Brand Split is working and the ratings are up, because there is more Gold and Leather on TV. The Championship Title Belts creates competition, and the more Championship Title Belts there are, in the highest level of Professional Sports Wrestling Entertainment, the more competition it will create. Instead of having just Dean Ambrose, The Miz, Rusev, The New Day, and Charlotte leading the way for WWE on Monday, with WWE recaps later in the week on Thursday, we now have Kevin Owens, Rusev, The New Day and Charlotte leading the way for Raw, with Dean Ambrose, The Miz, and whoever the new Blue Tag Team Champions and new Blue Women’s Champion will be at Backlash, leading the way for Smackdown. Smackdown, with the WWE machine behind it, did exactly what TNA has been trying to do for over a decade. I feel like the WWE should never have ended the Brand Extension in the first place.

 

[Spencesc11]

2 Moves to make the brand split make more sense.....

Bray Wyatt & Erik Rowan to Raw, The Club to Smackdown
* This allows the New Day vs. The Wyatt Family to pick back up and The Club to rejoin with AJ Styles and dominate the "B" show.

Samoa Joe & Apollo Crews to Raw, Enzo & Big Cass to Smackdown
* Joe could join with Rusev and become a dominant force, Crews can just job on Raw when someone is getting pushed. And with New Day & Enzo & Cass being the 2 biggest face teams you should have them on separate brands.

 

[L@RISANO]

The WWE have been quite successful in making SmackDown watchable again.

I have said in other posts before, SmackDown, from top to bottom has been better than RAW since the Brand Split began mostly due to the fact that the majority of their programming has done the one thing WWE shows have failed spectcularly at since I restarted watching a couple years ago, and that is, the use of storyline for each and every segment no matter the superstar involved.

It has been refreshing to see and long may it continue(hopefully RAW will follow suit soon enough as well).


To RAW's credit, Finn Balor and Kevin Owens are fresh faces elevated into the Main Event scene, and it has been refreshing to see WWE actually pull the trigger on them(although one happened due to an injury to the other). That said, RAW's mid and lower card scene sucks, atm, lMO. That said, the Divas title storyline has loads of potential to last till Mania, as long as WWE play their cards smartly.

 

[Isaac Kaye]

I think there is a healthy level of intrigue at the moment that people want to see play out. Smackdown is being sold as the A Show which people will believe until it's obvious that it's not. For whatever people say, Ambrose has been generally good for ratings too.

RAW has a completely new feel to it and obviously from a creative standpoint things are totally up in the air, which I guess will make people tune in too. That said, another mediocre showing like last Monday will see rating fall again. That was a total shitfest.

Smackdown going live is a brilliant idea though. Hats off to them, and that should definitely improve ratings at least in the short to medium term as long as they keep stuff relevant and exciting. I've started watching it again anyway - and I never bothered before.

 

[Rocky84]

I dunno how anyone can say the success is not necessarily the brand split, and that it's just better creative ideas...because there are better creative ideas as a result of the brand split lol.

When you split the roster the way me and King Patrick suggested way back .. you get to assess the overall situation so much better and be in a much better position to create better storylines, and give opportunities to those who wouldn't have it otherwise. That's what's happening here.

My only knock is the way the rosters are split. They could've did it a little bit better... I was calling for 2 hours only on Raw, and a 50/50 split, but I understand there's so much talent that they need 3 hours on Raw (thank god I can fast forward on my DVR through crap segments).

Like some have said, having Sami Zayn and Cesaro on Smackdown would've been huge. Hopefully they can find their way there sometime in the near future, or get a better chance when they split the rosters again after Mania.