The Clint Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Stop imitating reddit, Dizzy.  It's very difficult to keep talents away from being over-exposed when WWE have so many hours of TV to fill a week. I've felt that's the main problem for a long time now.  It's probably nigh-on impossible, but they don't seem to try hard. Million Dollar Man could get years out of the gimmick because you only saw him for five minutes maybe twice a month, doing a little promo and beating a jobber,  You can't have a popular wrestler only appear on TV every other week when you have 5 hours of weekly programmes to fill. That Million Dollar Man example only worked because back then you had 1 hour for Superstars and another hour for Challenge, there was hardly any air time to fit the majority of the roster on the TV shows. Plus with only 4 main events to the year they could ease up on the storyline front with most of the talent. It's a totally different ball game now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 True, I should have mentioned something about that in the rest of the post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted January 18, 2016 Moderators Share Posted January 18, 2016 Well that's their own fucking fault for having such a stupid business model. Doesn't mean the tv they produce as a result isn't shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted January 18, 2016 Paid Members Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) The thing is they have endless rematches on live TV and their roster seems really small too. It makes no sense. Among sorting out all the booking and TV format problems, they should double the size of the roster. There's more great talent out there than probably ever right now and WWE have more TV time than ever to fill. No match should ever take place twice in the same week at any point EVER in WWE. But instead it's expected. Edited January 18, 2016 by LaGoosh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted January 18, 2016 Moderators Share Posted January 18, 2016 But could they afford to have a roster twice the size..? Surely not with the amount they've lost switching to the network model. They prop up their earnings by committing to deliver more hours of TV than they can afford to profitably produce a decent quality of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) The thing is they have endless rematches on live TV and their roster seems really small too. It makes no sense. Among sorting out all the booking and TV format problems, they should double the size of the roster. Â That strikes me as an easy potential fix in terms of stagnation, but presumably it doesn't make financial sense. They're only running two tours, so that's only X amount of spots (maybe 40?). Doubling the roster size means doubling the downside wage bill (or at least doubling the middle/lower end of it) and that's a lot of wrestlers who would only be working the Monday and/or Tuesday. And realistically, there likely isn't much financial gain in the midcard being more varied. The key segments would still be Reigns/Rollins/Ambrose/Cena etc. Having sixteen options to face Ziggler rather than putting him against Tyler Breeze, for example, might not be worth adding all those other people to the roster. Â It's ultimately a massive gamble that, without the creative overhaul, could well result in spending millions on a wider range of less-frequent Dolph Zigglers. The goal of the company is to make money rather than get 100% positive feedback on social media -- if they can do both, great, but if they can't, their bottom line is the more important of the two. Â How did the old New Talent Initiative work? I don't remember much about it and it probably wasn't very successful, but were those guys all given main roster contracts or was it a trial basis thing? They have got loads of wrestlers in NXT that aren't going to get the Shield/Wyatts push but could be spreading out the TV time on Raw. Edited January 18, 2016 by King Pitcos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted January 18, 2016 Paid Members Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) Yeah I have no idea how it would work financially. I suppose someone would have to make the risky decision of "right shall we get a bigger roster meaning that we make less money short term but potentially make more cash long term by having improved TV leading to larger attendance, higher ratings and more merchandise sales...or it could make no difference and Stephanie gets a smaller Christmas bonus for no gain?" Â The chances of it happening are slim to none I know. I just love the idea of about 20-30 or so of the really top talents out there being added to the roster. Not even long term either. Give them each 1 year deals. Sink or swim. Consistent roster turnover and the whole time keep the few who turn out to be draws. Edited January 18, 2016 by LaGoosh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UK Kat Von D Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 TV time isn't an issue. Breaking Ground provided an hour of great TV with a very small cast of key characters, without any full matches. Their problem is because they have all the characters on TV doing fuck all. Â Dibasie didnt have the amount of TV time that most the roster do now, but he probably probably had more character and stories than majority of the roster have Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted January 18, 2016 Moderators Share Posted January 18, 2016 That's true. The whole minimal talking because of international markets thing is another aspect of their current model that fucking stinks. Â It can't be that expensive to pay to get subtitling done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hallicks Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Is that actually true, though? There's probably something to it, but I've not seen it written down. Surely the onus is on the international broadcaster to do the work and WWE can script what they want. One would think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Pitcos Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 It probably isn't the cost of subtitling that's the issue. Wrestling's bread and butter is barely-educated morons and children, the sort of people who don't want to read a television show. I'm assuming people in Timbuktu get a version of Star Wars that is dubbed, but doing that for wrestling might well be cost-prohibitive if the show has more talking, and it's still less universal than move-move-move. Â Giving over chunks of the show to bland workrate rematches might make me cry on the Internet, but it probably makes very little difference to how much money I spend on wrestling, and it might be making a significant difference in a positive way internationally. There has to be a reason they do it. 50 failed sitcom writers aren't doing 50-hour weeks and coming up with "segment 6, Del Rio vs Sin Cara, 18 minutes" surely. But then, if the company is mandating that kind of stuff on the show, why have so many expensive writers in the first place just to do a job that could be done by pieces of paper with names on and a hat? Something doesn't add up. Â Comparing Raw and Smackdown to Breaking Ground and Total Divas is quite apples and oranges though. The reality shows are the easiest WWE output to watch without skipping ahead, but being a different genre, they aren't bound by the rules of wrestling like Raw and Smackdown are. Their storylines don't have to build to a wrestling match -- and even the ones that do build to wrestling matches don't do so in the same context that a wrestling show does. WWE seems to have mostly ran out of ways to build up mainstream wrestling matches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted January 18, 2016 Paid Members Share Posted January 18, 2016 Here's one. I remember after the WCW buyout, the initial idea was for Raw to be on at 8 to 10 and then for WCW to be on at 11 for an hour. That would have been 3 hours of WWF wrestling on Mondays some 13 years after it happened. I wonder how that would have faired. Especially since you think a lot of that second hour would be building to make you watch the WCW show. Â How shit would that have been though? After the commercial break, they drag out Hudson and Arn and remove the ring aprons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UK Kat Von D Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I know I've heard Cena talk about the international market before on a podcast with Austin and heard it several times since, but the first time is the only one I remember. Â If the international markets are really a concern they should record two versions of smackdown. One for western audiences that is more talk heavy and gives meaning to the matches on Raw and another one for foreign markets that features more matches (those matches then get used as Network exclusives.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Undefeated Steak Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I know I've heard Cena talk about the international market before on a podcast with Austin and heard it several times since, but the first time is the only one I remember. Â If the international markets are really a concern they should record two versions of smackdown. One for western audiences that is more talk heavy and gives meaning to the matches on Raw and another one for foreign markets that features more matches (those matches then get used as Network exclusives.) Â I wonder why they can't do 'normal' episodes of Raw and Smackdown with the promos for the English speaking markets (which must be the vast majority) and play pre-recorded matches over the top for the non-English markets? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshC Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Bring back SuperAstros! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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