Three hours. 180 minutes. With the overrun lasting up to 15 minutes at
times, even longer. That is the current length of the weekly WWE RAW television program. It's too much. Too much of something is never a good thing.
The idea behind episodic television, which is technically what RAW is, is to keep people wanting more. To give the viewer a full experience, yet when it's over, leave them wanting more. In this day and age, by the time RAW ends each Monday night, I'm almost thankful that it's over. Sure, that could be due to the fact that I have to write detailed, live play-by-play results from start-to-finish, but prior to that being a part of my job, I would still get fatigued trying to sit through an entire episode of RAW without losing interest.
One of my favorite parts of the infamous "Attitude Era" in WWE during the late-1990s was the creativity in each of their television shows. The storylines were intriguing. In my opinion, they were far more complex -- in a good way -- as compared to modern wrestling angles. Each week when RAW was going off the air I was already craving the following week's episode to see how the story would continue.
As of right now, the largest revenue stream in WWE is the television rights fees. It actually doubles the amount of money they are generating through their pay-per-views, which is their second largest revenue stream. The old concept in wrestling was to use your television to entice people into buying tickets to live events. The model changed as time went on to using your television as a promotional vehicle to lure people into purchasing your monthly pay-per-view shows. WWE, by their own admission, is currently putting their focus into their television. Their current television contracts are almost up and the idea is to get their ratings as high as they can so that they can increase their television rights fees as much as possible. If that's the case, they need to find a way to go off the screen leaving the viewer desperate to wonder "what's going to happen next?" It might be too hard to do that with three hours to fill. The extra hour makes their show more valuable to cable companies, yet the quality of their product suffers as a result. WWE needs to find a happy medium.
For years now there has been a belief in wrestling that no matter what you do, you have a core audience that will deliver you a 3.0 cable rating. Just this past week RAW scored a 2.9 cable rating for their post-Survivor Series edition of the show. This was actually a considerable increase from the 2.7 that the show drew the previous week. The first hour of RAW on Monday night averaged 4.318 million viewers. The second hour drew 4.292 million viewers. The third and final hour of the show averaged 3.796 million viewers. What does that tell you? Well, it's simple -- three hours is too much.
Everyone knows the best part of a wrestling television broadcast is saved for the end of the show. The main event match or segment is what the company considers to be the most valuable product they have to offer. As fans, we understand this. Yet with this three hour model, it doesn't matter. Fans aren't sticking around to see the show from start-to-finish. An average of roughly 4.3 million viewers watched the first two hours and an average of 3.8 million viewers watched the third and final hour. This means approximately 500,000 viewers -- a half a million homes -- tuned out instead of sticking around to see "the best part of the show."
Three key conclusions can be drawn based off of that statistic.
1. The fans of the WWE product are young and probably can't -- or don't -- stay up that late because it's a school night and they have to get up early in the morning. The same can be said for older fans who work early hours.
2. NFL's Monday Night Football, which is considered one of the main competitors to WWE RAW, especially among key demos, is stealing fans. WWE advertises what they plan to do in their main events, so fans are aware of what's coming for the most part. As the NFL game gets more interesting as time goes on, fans are choosing to switch over to their product in favor of wrestling.
3. The fans are all "wrestling'd out." They've had their fill and they're moving onto something else.
All three of these issues can be solved the same way -- cut the show back to two hours. Younger fans who don't stay up to see the final hour will again be able to. Fans who are heavily interested in the NFL game on Monday night can watch all of RAW without missing the important part of the game. Finally, and arguably most important, the fans who can't maintain interest for such a long time will once again be able to watch the show from beginning-to-end without going insane.
The best part is it loosens things up creatively for the company. No longer will the creative team have to figure out a way to fill such a lengthy show knowing that it's only one of many shows that they have to come up with ideas for on a weekly basis. It will make things much easier from a creative standpoint to find a way to leave the viewers wanting more as the show goes off the screen. The ability to to have the fans thinking, "what's going to happen next?" becomes easier because you don't have to give them everything all at once. You can give fans the juicy part of a story and then deliver the resolution, or continuation to that story on the following week's show.
Unfortunately for wrestling fans, WWE is a business first and foremost. As long as they are earning such a large percentage of their overall income off of their weekly television shows, and their current goal is to try and get even more from these shows, cutting them down by an hour makes the product less valuable to a cable company. Basically, it doesn't seem like we're going to see RAW cut back to two hours anytime soon. WWE could always give the matches pay-per-view level time, creating the possibility for the promos and non-wrestling segments to be more creatively satisfying and fulfilling, but then that makes their pay-per-views less attractive. Less of a "must see." God knows the last thing WWE needs to do right now is anything that makes their pay-per-views less important, but that's a whole other story. Because I'm not obligated by a cable company to fill three hours each time I write an editorial, I'll save that story for next week's show. Hopefully one day WWE will again be able to do the same.
The idea behind episodic television, which is technically what RAW is, is to keep people wanting more. To give the viewer a full experience, yet when it's over, leave them wanting more. In this day and age, by the time RAW ends each Monday night, I'm almost thankful that it's over. Sure, that could be due to the fact that I have to write detailed, live play-by-play results from start-to-finish, but prior to that being a part of my job, I would still get fatigued trying to sit through an entire episode of RAW without losing interest.
One of my favorite parts of the infamous "Attitude Era" in WWE during the late-1990s was the creativity in each of their television shows. The storylines were intriguing. In my opinion, they were far more complex -- in a good way -- as compared to modern wrestling angles. Each week when RAW was going off the air I was already craving the following week's episode to see how the story would continue.
As of right now, the largest revenue stream in WWE is the television rights fees. It actually doubles the amount of money they are generating through their pay-per-views, which is their second largest revenue stream. The old concept in wrestling was to use your television to entice people into buying tickets to live events. The model changed as time went on to using your television as a promotional vehicle to lure people into purchasing your monthly pay-per-view shows. WWE, by their own admission, is currently putting their focus into their television. Their current television contracts are almost up and the idea is to get their ratings as high as they can so that they can increase their television rights fees as much as possible. If that's the case, they need to find a way to go off the screen leaving the viewer desperate to wonder "what's going to happen next?" It might be too hard to do that with three hours to fill. The extra hour makes their show more valuable to cable companies, yet the quality of their product suffers as a result. WWE needs to find a happy medium.
For years now there has been a belief in wrestling that no matter what you do, you have a core audience that will deliver you a 3.0 cable rating. Just this past week RAW scored a 2.9 cable rating for their post-Survivor Series edition of the show. This was actually a considerable increase from the 2.7 that the show drew the previous week. The first hour of RAW on Monday night averaged 4.318 million viewers. The second hour drew 4.292 million viewers. The third and final hour of the show averaged 3.796 million viewers. What does that tell you? Well, it's simple -- three hours is too much.
Everyone knows the best part of a wrestling television broadcast is saved for the end of the show. The main event match or segment is what the company considers to be the most valuable product they have to offer. As fans, we understand this. Yet with this three hour model, it doesn't matter. Fans aren't sticking around to see the show from start-to-finish. An average of roughly 4.3 million viewers watched the first two hours and an average of 3.8 million viewers watched the third and final hour. This means approximately 500,000 viewers -- a half a million homes -- tuned out instead of sticking around to see "the best part of the show."
Three key conclusions can be drawn based off of that statistic.
1. The fans of the WWE product are young and probably can't -- or don't -- stay up that late because it's a school night and they have to get up early in the morning. The same can be said for older fans who work early hours.
2. NFL's Monday Night Football, which is considered one of the main competitors to WWE RAW, especially among key demos, is stealing fans. WWE advertises what they plan to do in their main events, so fans are aware of what's coming for the most part. As the NFL game gets more interesting as time goes on, fans are choosing to switch over to their product in favor of wrestling.
3. The fans are all "wrestling'd out." They've had their fill and they're moving onto something else.
All three of these issues can be solved the same way -- cut the show back to two hours. Younger fans who don't stay up to see the final hour will again be able to. Fans who are heavily interested in the NFL game on Monday night can watch all of RAW without missing the important part of the game. Finally, and arguably most important, the fans who can't maintain interest for such a long time will once again be able to watch the show from beginning-to-end without going insane.
The best part is it loosens things up creatively for the company. No longer will the creative team have to figure out a way to fill such a lengthy show knowing that it's only one of many shows that they have to come up with ideas for on a weekly basis. It will make things much easier from a creative standpoint to find a way to leave the viewers wanting more as the show goes off the screen. The ability to to have the fans thinking, "what's going to happen next?" becomes easier because you don't have to give them everything all at once. You can give fans the juicy part of a story and then deliver the resolution, or continuation to that story on the following week's show.
Unfortunately for wrestling fans, WWE is a business first and foremost. As long as they are earning such a large percentage of their overall income off of their weekly television shows, and their current goal is to try and get even more from these shows, cutting them down by an hour makes the product less valuable to a cable company. Basically, it doesn't seem like we're going to see RAW cut back to two hours anytime soon. WWE could always give the matches pay-per-view level time, creating the possibility for the promos and non-wrestling segments to be more creatively satisfying and fulfilling, but then that makes their pay-per-views less attractive. Less of a "must see." God knows the last thing WWE needs to do right now is anything that makes their pay-per-views less important, but that's a whole other story. Because I'm not obligated by a cable company to fill three hours each time I write an editorial, I'll save that story for next week's show. Hopefully one day WWE will again be able to do the same.
courtesy :ewrestlingnews
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