Big Nick Dudley
Nick
Nothing, you took the air from my lungs.
Raw does a 3.0 rating; AKA Slyfox resists the urge to putdown Punk's drawing ability
- Thread starter klunderbunker
- Start date
Nothing, you took the air from my lungs.
justinsayne
Cody Rhodes is an excellant
The ratings system is horribly out of date, once people realize that perhaps then they'll stop reading so much into it. You have to remember that ratings do take into consideration the number of people who DVR the show, or watch online. Also people tend to forget that their are far more channels now than there used to be, giving people far more options of programming to watch. Rating s don't mean shit anymore, or at least not nearly as much as they did say a decade ago.
People are really not getting what is going on. If you only look around the IWC you would think WWE was putting out the greatest product of all time. I mean why shouldn't they think that. It has insider terms and name dropping every other segment. This is the IWC's wet dream. However with the drop in males and younger viewers it has to be a major concern. The NFL is getting almost 6 million viewers for pre season. What happens when they start getting almost double that once the season starts and you get a hot Monday Night game every week?
Unless it is the night after a PPV their core audience is not tuning in for whatever reason. You may or may not want to blame it on Punk, but when someone says they took Punk away from the title the argument is he is the center piece of the show and in a much larger role than the world title picture. That means he is the number one guy on the show. If I am not mistaken he had 3 segments counting his match last week.
Unless it is the night after a PPV their core audience is not tuning in for whatever reason. You may or may not want to blame it on Punk, but when someone says they took Punk away from the title the argument is he is the center piece of the show and in a much larger role than the world title picture. That means he is the number one guy on the show. If I am not mistaken he had 3 segments counting his match last week.
Perhaps saying it has absolutely no correlation was dramatic, but ratings≠quality. For example, Arrested Development was a wildly critically acclaimed show, but it got crap ratings and had to be cancelled.
But then there's the argument that wrestling exists solely to make money and therefore, the best wrestling is what makes the most money.
One could argue that for any form of entertainment, as its reason for existing is for making money. A major studio is going to make a film like Transformers over a film like Black Swan nine times out of ten because a movie about giant robots fighting each other will make bank despite how shitty the acting and story may be, but a story about a ballerina might not. Is anyone going to argue that Transformers is a better movie than Black Swan?
I absolutely agree with you. I just wanted to see what your reaction to that argument is. I also like the fact that Transformers seems to be the go-to example of a bad movie.
gurvinder372
Occasional Pre-Show
I am not sure if I agree with this. Most people sees the movie as a medium of entertainment and what entertains you totally depends on your sensibility. Black swan matches your sensibility, so you liked it. Trans-3 will matches some one else sensibility, so some will like it. Judging the box office response, trans-3 matches the sensibility of majority of people.
It's what I do.
We're not talking about traditional television shows, we're talking about pro wrestling. I can't speak for other television shows and what goals they try to achieve, but I do know wrestling. And wrestling has one goal and one goal only...to make money.
Movies and wrestling are not the same thing. That's the argument people always make in response, and it's always wrong. Tell me, how do you know a movie is bad before you watch it? You can't, right? But by the time you're watching it, they've already got your money.
Has there ever been a movie which has come out with 20 different parts? No? Then it's not really like wrestling at all. Wrestling is every week, without fail. Wrestling is television, which means it can be turned off at any time, and count against your ratings. Wrestling is graded ONLY by how many people are entertained by your product. They are completely different.
Isn't pro wrestling.
How can you all be fans of pro wrestling, and think the music business is anything like it? Or that the movie business is at all comparable to wrestling? I don't understand how reasonably intelligent and informed fans think music or movies can be compared at all to wrestling.
You make very good points, but ratings that stay stagnant, or drop, over a small time frame do have the ability to gauge the interest in your product. You're right that a 5.0 and a 3.5 mean completely separate things now than they did 15 years ago, but a 3.3 last week and a 3.0 this week can be telling.
And if we were talking about traditional television shows, you might have a point. But we're not, we're talking about wrestling.
Not really, not all entertainment mediums do so for the money. In fact, I would imagine that if you'd ask many music bands over the years, they would tell you they wish to make art, and if their art makes money, then it's a bonus.
But...Black Swan WAS made, and was released to theaters. And it stayed in theaters for a very long time. Not only can you not compare movies and wrestling, the example you've given is a very bad one.
But take a television show like Roseanne from the 90s. That show was very successful, but as that show progressed it was about far more than cheap laughs to gain advertising money. If you can't see the women's power movement which runs rampant in that show, or the teaching of values such as accepting and tolerating people from all walks of life (bigger people, gay people, gothic people, etc.) then you're not watching it. .
Entertainment is created for all sorts of reasons all the time, and I cannot guess as to the nature of these other movies, shows and music. I do know, however, pro wrestling exists ONLY to make money. And the only way pro wrestling makes money is to be entertaining. And if pro wrestling is entertaining, than it's doing a good job. If it does a good job, then people will watch.
Just because you want to justify the current storylines which do not seem to be gaining the company any steam, doesn't change what I'm saying to not be true. I'm right, and anyone with objective observation will tell you the same thing.
What makes wrestling so special? It has a niche audience? So did Firefly, another critically acclaimed show that ate it in the ratings.
Well now you're examining two separate entities. The artists want to make art. The writer wants to write beautiful novels, the singer wants to compose beautiful music, the painter wants to create beautiful paintings, and the wrestler wants to put on beautiful matches. It's the entities that pay them to do these things that care about the money primarily. Penguin Publishing doesn't give a fuck if it's a beautiful novel if they don't think it will sell. A record label isn't going to sign a band that's extraordinarily talented but isn't willing to sign away their rights so they can commercialize the shit out of them. Similarly, Vince McMahon isn't going to push a wrestler that he doesn't think can draw a ton of money. Doesn't mean that guy isn't a good wrestler.
And you show your ineptitude at looking at the big picture. Transformers had a $150 million production budget and was distributed by Paramount Pictures, which means tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars was poured into marketing the film. Meanwhile Black Swan was produced on a $13 million budget, and it was distributed by Fox Searchlight, which means not nearly as much money went into its marketing as Transformers.
Black Swan succeeded despite the fact that Fox Pictures wasn't willing to gamble on it like Paramount gambled on Transformers, proof that sometimes you'll find a diamond in the rough.
I've agreed with you that the storylines haven't picked up ratings any for the company time and time again. That doesn't mean they aren't ridiculously entertaining and exciting.
The Bearded One
Love is not admissable evidence.
I'd be more interested in seeing how the amount of viewers has changed over the years. They could have possibly gained viewers but lost some ratings, or even stayed consistent in viewers and lost ratings. I've been looking for a site to have this information, but I can't find it.
The fact that it is special. The fact they don't get multiple takes for their television, everything is live. The fact their actors do their own stunts. The fact wrestling is an athletic engagement, not one that gets by because of a script. The fact wrestling can exist without television. The fact wrestling doesn't exist solely on television, and instead depends on other means of moneymaking. The fact wrestling appears on two different TV stations on two different nights of the week with original programming. The fact there is no "season finale" which the WWE then takes a break from television.
There are many more reasons, if you want them. However, I think that is more than enough to prove my point.
Completely missing the point.
A pro wrestlers job is to make money. Can we at least agree on that? When Vince McMahon hires a new wrestler, that new wrestler's job is to someday make Vince McMahon money. It may not be in his first year, as he learns the WWE style of pro wrestling, but eventually he will be expected to make money. If he doesn't make money, he gets fired.
When an author sits down to pen a book, quality is not determined solely upon how many copies a book sells tomorrow. Writing style, proper use of the English language, how well the book hooks you, does it accomplish the motive the author set out to achieve...those are just some of the things which determine whether the author has done their job.
In pro wrestling, the wrestler's job is to make money. That's it. There's no subjective quality for it, there's no bonus for having 14 five star matches in a row. Either you make money, or you don't. If you do, you get pushed up the card. If you don't, you get fired.
Pro wrestling is about as simple to understand on the business side as any business that exists. You cannot say the same about the other mediums of entertainment.
Yeah...that's a great big picture and all JGlass, but how about next time you find one that is actually relevant to this discussion?
You just wasted your time writing and my time reading. I don't give a rat's rear end how much money went into production and marketing, that has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion right now. The point is, Black Swan, which is considered a much better work artistically WAS made and WAS released to theaters. It WASN'T a movie which was written with the idea that masses of Americans would want to go watch it opening day, unlike a Transformers which was clearly intended to rape Americans of their money. This proves my point that not all movies are made to optimize monetary intake.
Which makes it different from pro wrestling. Next time you talk about big picture, you might want to be in the same ballpark I am.
Well...yeah, it kind of does. How can you say something is "ridiculous entertaining and exciting" if more people continue to tune out? Now, I think there was a Monday Night Football game this week, which is probably the reason for the drop from last week, but the fact is if wrestling was "ridiculous entertaining and exciting" then people wouldn't change from Raw to MNF.
I agree with you, I've been entertained as well. But it's time for YOU to look at the big picture (and hopefully the same one I'm looking at this time). What you think is entertaining doesn't matter. What I think is entertaining doesn't matter. What matters is what ALL wrestling fans combined think is entertaining. And right now, there is absolutely no indication wrestling fans find these storylines anymore entertaining than they did last year's or the year's before that, at least when measuring TV ratings.
The reason it's hard to find that information is because that information really isn't very good information. Ratings compare one television show against others to see who is captivating the available television audience. If there are 300 new television audience members, and you gain 10 fans, while your rival gains 290 fans, then you're not really doing a very good job.
Ratings are just the better way to determine success, which is why most sources will only list those and not individual viewership.
Not nearly as easy as blaming Triple H. It's been an easy and ready made excuse for 10 years now.
Yeah but that argument is old. I'm just gonna blame Del Rio. It's new and with him as champ ratings were scaled back.
Poop Master Flex
Mid-Card Championship Winner
Oh well still roughly the same rating Cena did for 5 years as the summer of Punkk fluctuates between the high 2's low 3's. Sadly NOONES a big draw in WWE right now. I hope it changes soon
FunKay the Inevitable
People Like Me, We Don't Play
Read/listen to a review?
As for the rating, ratings mean nothing in relation to quality of product. If that were so, then the ratings would never have been as high as they were in 1999.
Which only tells you one person didn't like it.
Say what? 1999 was a VERY exciting and revolutionary time for pro wrestling.
FunKay the Inevitable
People Like Me, We Don't Play
Usually a film gets a large cluster of similar reviews surrounding it, you can tell if it's worth watching or not. If it's mixed then you have to make your own decisions.
Exciting and revolutionary doesn't mean quality. I'm talking match wise here rather than story also.
And if you have a large cluster of reviews, how did that large cluster come by their reviews? By paying for and watching it? Which means the movie already has their money?
I agree the match quality was, as a general rule, quite poor during the Attitude Era. But match quality doesn't bring fans to the show. Never has. What brings fans to the show are the promos and the angles themselves. 90,000 people showed up in Detroit to watch Hogan vs. Andre, not to see a 5 star classic, but to see the two biggest names in pro wrestling lock up.
So it went with the Attitude Era. You had two of the strongest draws of all time, doing revolutionary and exciting things, and the ratings reflected that. Was there a lot of garbage in the Attitude Era? Absolutely. Tons of it. But the main-event was usually pretty darn good storywise, so people tuned in.
FunKay the Inevitable
People Like Me, We Don't Play
Oh no, I completely agree. The main event scene was always far more interesting than anything else, but at the same time that's what people were turning in for.
Exactly. And that's why ratings were so high, like they deserved to be.
Shadowmancer
I am The Last Baron
Please Sly, Ratings are not a better way of determining success, they are A way.
Do Ratings take into account recording it to watch later?
Do Ratings take into account recording it to watch later?
Why should any of these things force us to judge quality vs. viewership differently than another television program?
Yes, we can agree on that.
If you take everything out of context, then it makes sense, but put it back into context and it doesn't. If a wrestler had 14 five star matches in a row he would get a bonus, because even if that wrestler was a total schmo before, now he's gonna be a hot commodity in high demand and the WWE brass will do everything to make sure they can keep him happy and putting on those 5 star matches. On the flip side, even if an author pens 15 critically acclaimed books and none of them manage to sell more than a few thousand copies, no publisher is gonna touch him, because the publishers are all about making money.
That's fair, but in the end every big company cares about one thing, and one thing only, and that's money.
Yeah...that's a great big picture and all JGlass, but how about next time you find one that is actually relevant to this discussion?
But the ones that are pushed heavily are the ones that were made to optimize monetary intake. They call those tentpoles, and they include things like Harry Potter, Spider-Man, and Transformers. In wrestling they call them Cena and Stone Cold and Hulk Hogan. Doesn't mean there aren't awesome movies/wrestlers that are pushed as heavily.
Because things can be exciting and entertaining without garnering great ratings.
What you and I think certainly does matter, maybe not to the WWE's plans to make lots of money, but critically it certainly does. In every form of art you can separate the economics of it from the artistic side, and in every art for you can find examples of shit that was successful, and beautiful works that failed.