I don't know if overkill is the right word. I don't believe they are going to get to the point where you absolutely can't miss a week of Raw or Smackdown. I look at all the programming as giving me the option to watch wrestling whenever I want to but not feel obligated to watch every week.
Kind of like what baseball does. It's always on, I'll watch it when I have the time, and sometimes some really cool things happen.
Could see it being dropped in a few months, with Smackdown holding an "expansion" draft or something like that, where they get to draft 10 or so superstars from Raw to even out the rosters.
Everyone realizes they are trying to sell out stadiums, cutting amount of content they get per ticket is bad idea. Which is why I think both RAW and SDL should be 3 hours a pop, and start doing a "halftime" like in NBA/NFL, where you get those pre-show people to go over the content. Or both should be 2 hours and keep current setup. Why I want them even, to stop this flag ship bullshit. It is one thing for Stephanie to say her show is better, butt fucking Vince says lets have competition and make Smackdown great again aka equal, but then sits there and calls RAW better as the Flag Ship.
Thing is, 90 minutes is the most ideal amount of time, but not to ticket holders or selling ads. When I watch Hulu versions of RAW or old SD (pre SDL), the 90 minute episodes turn out perfect. When I watch old Smackdowns and RAW's from early 00's, they are under 100 minutes, and I like it.
I personally think, it should be 90 minutes on TV, but three hours on Hulu/WWE Network. So all the people hating would get the short show they want, then others can watch and get everything that is going on. The problem is, they have a lot of stories to fill a PPV card, which you can't really do as easily in 90 minutes, if you have a lot of wrestling.
I personally think, it should be 90 minutes on TV, but three hours on Hulu/WWE Network. So all the people hating would get the short show they want, then others can watch and get everything that is going on.
Speaking of that ... I just noticed they upload full episodes of Raw and Smackdown on their Youtube channel. And while Smackdown is full, Raw is cut to 2 hours.
I'm unable to watch it live, so I usually watch it the next day. And since I have Youtube on PS4 this seems like a pretty good option.
Won't happen anytime in the near future because there is money to be made from the 3-hour format. I would love to see both shows at 2 hours to make things equal, but WWE won't go for what they will call a 'financial gamble' like that even though they did it for years.
You have 10x more of a chance of sd going 3hre than raw going back to 2. Hell if they keep it in the 2.5-2.7mil range viewership wise plus raise the Hulu viewership up from 7th most watched show on Hulu to where raw is (3rd last year and 4gh the year before) then they will push the blue brand into 3 hours for the extra revenue. USA still saw sd as its second highest rated show over their series they put out even when it was struggling with viewership because it beat all their originals. If they get their SyFy numbers basically they will go 3 hours and wwe will concede it to them and just sign more vets and another 5-6 from nxt. Raw isn't turning back to 2 hours
An hour less would certainly encourage me to watch the show live as opposed just catching everything on their youtube channel. They have been doing 3 hour raws for 4 years now though and I highly doubt they are going to stop because of the ad revenue they generate from it.
They've really screwed themselves with the format.
Even if they want to get rid of it for creative reasons, there's going to be pressure to keep it around in their Corporate structure for financial gain.
What they ought to do to get themselves out of it, is re-introduce Saturday Night's Main Event from time to time with an hour (or maybe hour and a half) run time and have two or three marquee matches or even two matches and some killer segments like a star studded Ambrose Asylum or something. If they need more ad revenue than that they could always start up Sunday Night Heat again as an hour show and maybe just make it Friday Night Heat so it's not 3 straight days of wrestling.
3 hours is too much, never should've been used outside of RAW specials, and I've been saying this since it's debut.
No. 3 hours is bad for the product and makes the show drag, but it earns significantly more money than 2 hours. And that's what they care about the most.
Essentially everything points to it being a good idea to change it back to 2 hours, less filler, easier to watch, much easier to book the show... apart from the one thing that matters, the money.
So sadly we're stuck with 3 hours. They did a pretty good job with it for the last episode to be fair to them, they just need to make sure that everything that happens means something in the grand scheme of things.
It really does need to emphasized that the whole 3 hour thing has come out as being more of a USA network thing than a WWE thing (even though WWE do naturally benefit from it). Like others have said it's more likely that SD will go to 3 hours than Raw going back to two.
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