What style of programming do you think professional wrestling should adopt?

[Tastycles]

In the 80s, WWF exploited the music television phenomenon to give us the foundations of WrestleMania and the first wrestling boom in the modern era. Fast forward 10 years and we saw both WCW and WWF exploit shock television as a way to boost the ratings.

However, since then, wrestling hasn't really attempted to copy the current trend. WWE have started to do what they were doing in the early 90s, and TNA are still on shock TV, it would seem. Wrestling missed the reality boom, and NXT seems to be a few years too late.

Wrestling is never going to be a trend setter when it comes to programming, so in order to breach the mainstream again, it has to copy the mainstream again.

As I see it, the most popular TV programmes now are high concept dramas. Clearly, Lost can't really be copied in a wrestling setting, but the one thing that makes these programmes so watchable is the fact they are story driven. They always end with you wanting to know with what will happen next.

Wrestling needs to focus on these kinds of cliffhanger storylines, and not cheap pops for Hornswoggle. Thinks like Punk's associate are a good start, but we need more things like that. Once wrestling does that, it will have people actually wanting to tune in on a weekly basis, as opposed to dipping their toes in the water every now and then.

What style of programming do you think would make wrestling more popular?

 

[Reddannihilation]

I agree with you wrestling needs in-depth storylines that keep the audience's attention and keep them guessing. That style of booking was touched on in the 90's with broadcasts ending before they concluded to give viewers a reason to tune in the next week. And recently both the WWE and TNA have experimented with this, last year CM Punk gave us an interesting angle during his face to heel turn, which started off with him just assuming he was allowed to cash in his case on Hardy, it kept it interesting as he spent a few weeks between face and heel and served to help the feud.

Similarly Angle and Anderson had the same thing going, allowing the characters to get more personal and making people care about their respective characters. Like you pointed out they've added punk's associate and whilst I'm not sure they may be adding more depth to this upcoming Orton and Edge angle. In depth stories that make the audience care are what wrestling needs and I think that slowly but surely both companies are picking up on this and hopefully will get better at it.

 

[Davi323]

I would be happy if they stopped assuming we all have short attention spans. The WWE and TNA both pretend we have short memories. I want long feuds like the 80s had. I am sick of the feuds that only last PPV to PPV. I want long term storylines, that are drawn out. Basically, I want sagas, not episodic feuds, where it only lasts three weeks.