[Starbuck]

DAT 2.0 ERA

[Shawn Morrison]

FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD GOOO BACK TOO 2 HOURS. People didn't even tune in for the top two guys in WWE, Punk and Cena, that is how tiring 3 hours is. Plus with 3 hours, they already run all the possible match combinations to the ground, they will be left with nothing original to do.

[Starbuck]

Here's the decision they are faced with...apparently lol:

1) Have a 3 hour show, make an absolute mint off the third hour but at the expense of ratings and the overall quality of the shows

2) Go back to 2 hours, lose out on a lot of money, improve the quality of the show and most likely improve ratings as well

As a businessman, what would you do if you were Vince McMahon? I can see why they've done it, even if they were forced into it by USA. Maybe they can do it for now while the show and wrestling in general is a bit of a slump. They can set aside all that extra money and then when they're ready to perhaps start a new boom or go in a new direction, they'll have a shit ton of money just sitting to spend on advertising, promotion, marketing, whatever the hell else. Who knows, it's just an idea. Or maybe we'll be stuck with 3 hours forever. Money > all at the end of the day. It's just unfortunate that in order for them to make that money they have turned their flagship show into a complete chore to watch.

[Shawn Morrison]

Originally Posted by Starbuck

Here's the decision they are faced with...apparently lol:

1) Have a 3 hour show, make an absolute mint off the third hour but at the expense of ratings and the overall quality of the shows

2) Go back to 2 hours, lose out on a lot of money, improve the quality of the show and most likely improve ratings as well

As a businessman, what would you do if you were Vince McMahon? I can see why they've done it, even if they were forced into it by USA. Maybe they can do it for now while the show and wrestling in general is a bit of a slump. They can set aside all that extra money and then when they're ready to perhaps start a new boom or go in a new direction, they'll have a shit ton of money just sitting to spend on advertising, promotion, marketing, whatever the hell else. Who knows, it's just an idea. Or maybe we'll be stuck with 3 hours forever. Money > all at the end of the day. It's just unfortunate that in order for them to make that money they have turned their flagship show into a complete chore to watch.

Once ratings start decreasing even further the network itself will tell them to go back to two hours, or else they will risk the viewers for the show, which is a bad thing for both WWE and the USA Network.

[Rock316AE]

I expected Jerry's promoted return to do big and it did for the first part which was real and emotional, what it should have been. Good to see that the second part with the disturbing act of the Punk/Heyman segment lost all the viewers and more. That's exactly what I predicted in the RAW thread. Cena/Punk doing horrible wasn't surprising, it was never that big to begin with and the fact that they did it so many times lowered it even more. The most impressive thing in this breakdown is the big 10pm gain, I'm pretty sure that it's the biggest 10pm gain since the move to 3 hours. Ryback is currently 3 out of 3 in a main time slot, Ziggler/Otunga, tag with Cena and now a huge gain for a match with a ref. Ryback is the hottest TV attraction in the industry today based on his results every time they're promoting him in a key position. And if he made a difference on PPV, according to a report a few weeks ago in his first PPV main event ever(In his current persona), he can be considered along with Cena in every aspect besides his merchandise sales and family fanbase on the road.

[Undertaker]

Why do people complain about RAW being 3 hours? Personally, I don't watch the entire 3 hours. I either just tune in and out, or I just skip the entire first hour completely, and just catch anything good that happened on you tube. If you don't like it, then just don't watch an hour of it.

[Choke2Death]

Originally Posted by The Sandrone

In all fairness, last year's build had Rock and was only two hours, so it isn't a really fair comparison. However, what you could point out is Raw's ratings for the last two months have been lower than where they were last year during the same two months (almost every week has been down the whole year if I'm not mistaken).

However 2.8-2.9 is becoming the average, which is terrible, but at this point if the show gets even that, it's "okay" for right now's standards, though obviously bad in the grand scheme of things. However if they can remain in business even with those ratings, it doesn't really matter.

Wrong, "Raw Gets Rocked" at 14/11/2011 was a three hour special and I remember staying up to watch it and almost falling asleep at school due to being extremely tired. What a waste of time that was. The Rock did his thing but I just expected a lot more with all the excitement and shit.

[YoungGun_UK]

It's a 3 hour show now which obviously means the number was going to get diluted.

[Jotunheim]

Originally Posted by Sparta101

Why do people complain about RAW being 3 hours? Personally, I don't watch the entire 3 hours. I either just tune in and out, or I just skip the entire first hour completely, and just catch anything good that happened on you tube. If you don't like it, then just don't watch an hour of it.

you just said it yourself, the idea is that the overall product should be good enough to sit through it, but instead it's complete garbage and we have to skip most of it because it's mind numbingly boring, thus, the overall product it's awful, affecting ratings, and so on

[ellthom]

Ratings will never be high for wrestling again, wrestling isn't cool anymore. WWE will never go back to the ratings they had over 10 years ago no matter who has the title, not a single person in the WWE right NOW can draw. We can pick names and point fingers but lets face it everyone has tuned out of wrestling to either move on or go watch something more engaging. The only people still wathcing now are

Those that cling onto hope that wrestling will be great again.
Kids who will most likely feel Wrestling is childish by the time they are 12
then there are probably a large amount of people who instead illegally stream/pirate the shows which don't help the ratings either.

Ratings will go up slightly maybe and go back down again. Wrestlemania showed us that the only way to make people watch is to add a former wrestler now movie star to a match, a FORMER WWE star, thats very sad that WWE cant create new stars and have got to rely on old ones to big up the ratings. People just don't watch to watch WWE as much as they used too. It sounds harsh but its near true. I am the only one of my friends who now watches WWE out of everyone I knew who used to.. very sad.

I wouldnt be surprised to see WWE in TNA ratings territory soon