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Posts Tagged ‘ratings’

Everyone in WWE tv stands to get some praise for how WWE Raw has been performing this summer. According to a recent USA Network press release, Raw averaged a 5.72 Nielsen during this summer, which would make this the highest-rated summer in WWE Raw history since 2001, just shortly after WWE acquired WCW.

These numbers reflect a multi-year rebuilding period from that time; with a fresh injection of young talent and second- and third-generation superstars now nearing their prime, WWE has completed its rebuilding period that began at the end of the Attitude era, when Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock both scaled back their involvement and eased into retirement; Austin left due to accumulated injuries while Dwayne Johnson left to become a legit Hollywood action star.

The ratings are in and McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania didn’t evidence any ratings improvement for the WWE. In fact, the numbers slipped to 3.0 after hovering around 3.1 to 3.2 in recent weeks. So, giving away oodles of money isn’t going to make people watch pro wrestling. That’s pretty much settled, right?

So, quick, before Vince McMahon starts hawking anti wrinkle cream on the air, let’s make this clear one more time: wrestling is what makes people want to watch wrestling. As a recent entry from me showed, with about 90 broadcast minutes to work with on Monday, Raw featured about 30 minutes of in-ring time and over 60 minutes of non-wrestling content.

That mix needs to switch polarities. At the very minimum, a two-hour-plus-overrun Raw broadcast should feature 45 minutes in the ring 45 minutes of other stuff; and wrestling was never as popular as when the mix was 60 minutes in-ring, 30 minutes out.

Actual wrestling matches are what boosts ratings, Vince. Learn it, live it, love it.

The last true “holy sh-t” moment I remember on SmackDown was years ago, when Big Show back body-dropped Brock Lesnar and the ring collapsed. Moments like that create buzz and buzz creates an interest in watching, which boosts ratings. As for RAW, it’s been a while, which is surprising since I generally prefer RAW to Smackdown.

The rating for this week’s Raw was 3.4, down 0.2 from last week despite two clean finishes and a hot main event between Jeff Hardy and Shawn Michaels, that Hardy won. Mortgage lenders aren’t betting the future on Raw ratings, that’s for sure.

Despite common sense that if everything is in reruns due to the writers’ strike, which was recently resolved, that original programming like WWE broadcasts would go up; but that hasn’t proved to be the case. Instead, it seems that when viewership goes down in general, show does ratings for everything else on the air, new or rerun.