The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[The King of Old School]

I genuinely don't know how people can watch it with no fans. It's just horrible.

I'm reading the results to keep a tab on things, and will probably watch the MITB matches as they sound ridiculous.

 

[Supremo]

I’m not an expert on ratings, and will oftentimes completely zone out when Meltzer runs through them on Observer Radio, but I’m absolutely convinced this empty arena stuff is going to leave permanent damage.

The story of WWE the last fifteen years or so has been them chipping away at the size of their fanbase by forcing people to fall out of the habit of watching.

Whether it was increasing the number of Pay Per Views to two-a-month at the height of the original brand split, increasing Raw to three hours, increasing the current length of Pay Per Views to about five to six hours or adding NXT to national TV. Every step of the way they’ve made it harder and harder to watch everything, forcing people to skip stuff here and there, which in turn results in people getting used to not watching, then just binning it off entirely.

It already felt like it was at the peak level, where only absolute freaks like me were still watching, and now they’re putting on shows that feel like the training levels on WWE2K, as if we’re waiting for the real show to load.

Once the hardest of hardcores stop trying to keep up you have to wonder just how low the number will go and if it will ever return to what were already record-setting low numbers to begin with. At least if they’d just suspended shows for a while there would’ve been an excitement and anticipation about them returning. Just continuing without fans and putting on some of the worst shows of all time could prove fatal.

[BomberPat]

a half-formed thought I had this morning is that a lot of this could be a consequence of WWE having planted their flag so firmly as being Entertainment rather than live sports. 

At a time when no other live sports are happening, if they could still fall even loosely into that bracket, you'd think they'd be hoovering up people starved of any live content. But they've distanced themselves so much from that world that it's not helped them at all. Losing viewers at a time when people have literally nothing better to do than sit on their arse in front of the TV is a hell of a thing.

 

[Michael_3165]

Agree w you Supremo. 

 

Many fans watch due to habit. If they have a free months of not watching because it's so shit without fans, they may not return. 

[CavemanLynn]

It's especially mad considering the rest of media and entertainment have gone the other way in terms of length of content. Whereas attention spans have massively shortened in recent years, WWE seem insistent on piling on more and more runtime onto match segments.

I know the Attitude Era is long gone, but this is the time when your live content needs to move faster between formats. The longer matches just highlight the pre-existing issues. It's why AEW has been more watchable, because the variety of formats on Dynamite, mixing standard in-ring action with ringside interviews, pre-taped vignettes and serialised documentary shorts, keeps things rolling more enjoyably. The wrestling matches themselves chug along much more nicely too because of the deliberate change of setting to a more intimate venue, with just enough ringsiders making lots of the right kind of noise and emphasis on running, reactive commentary.

WWE won't lose viewers because of the lack of crowds; it'll lose viewers because it's made errors in its product development over the last decade that it just can't mask in this climate.

[DCW]

If they actually had have stopped it would probably have been the best thing for them too. Give everybody involved a chance for a break (not just wrestlers, but writers, production staff etc) and build some legitimate anticipation for its return to TV. The old adage "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" exists for a reason. 

But no, instead they are putting on god awful shows in front of an empty arena, have made the state of Florida even more of a laughing stock and are happy to risk their employees health during a pandemic to ensure TV money keeps coming. Just on that, I assume a break clause exists in those TV contracts if ratings get to a certain low level, so they might be fucking themselves on that front anyway.

Edited May 6, 2020 by DCW

[Chris B]

Also, it feels like there have been last straws - for all the flack the calls to cancel the network have had, the figures have been declining, as people have actually been cancelling it (according to year-on-year figures post-Wrestlemania).

For most, this doesn't mean that it's a case of 'WELL, THIS IS IT, I REGISTER MY PROTEST, SIR!', but just a continuing list of reasons to feel bad about watching WWE. As the show becomes less and less fun to watch, there just become fewer reasons to stay loyal. And this has been while there have been real contenders to watch easily elsewhere for the first time in a long time.

That said, I wonder if the lockdown will actually mean a rise in subscriptions to the network - while the current content might be crap, I could see a bunch of people fancying watching a previous wrestlemania or a documentary.

[Daaaaaad!]

I think they're just married to certain ideas now to the point of having no other active recourse. They HAVE to be live. They HAVE to keep going no matter what anyone else is doing. They HAVE to honour their TV deal.

A large part of it is probably Vince's paranoia. He knows they've managed to bullshit their way into this Fox deal. At least if they honour it, the money keeps rolling in and Fox can't void it. Short-term gain without any consideration of what could happen longer term.

[ColinBollocks]

Indeed. It's like the Premier League. It's all driven by them not wanting to give one penny up of their huge telly deals, not a lot else. Vince has been pumping out shite for years; quality control is long gone.

[King Pitcos]

1 hour ago, DCW said:

Just on that, I assume a break clause exists in those TV contracts if ratings get to a certain low level, so they might be fucking themselves on that front anyway.

They’ll just stunt book and get some of the names back to try and stave off the collapse if there’s big pressure from the network, same as they always do when they get desperate. Edge and Orton are on next week. Kevin Owens will probably come back if they try. Undertaker will rock up if the money’s right, daresay the same for Hogan and Goldberg. Triple H hasn’t had a televised match in ages.

No idea what the expectations are at the moment, though. Raw was still three of the top six hours on cable on Monday night - but in May last year it was the top three on a night with no basketball, whereas this week it was #3, #4 and #6. Opposing basketball last year, it was sometimes lower in the rankings than it was this week. USA might be upset that it’s not doing better without sports opposition, or they might be glad they’re getting anything at all that’s keeping them near the top. A lot of nights (including Wednesdays with NXT), they don’t crack the top 50.

I don’t see the ratings going up much for any wrestling for the remainder of the empty arenas though, whatever they do. AEW are down to about half the viewership they were doing when they started. NXT is even lower than AEW most weeks. Loads of people have got rid of cable until the sports come back, so the only wrestling show that should be able to hold steady is SmackDown as it’s the only one on normal telly. And that’s down as well. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by King Pitcos

[Perry]

BT must be well pissed off about these unforeseen circumstances. They threw a shit load of cash at WWE in order to outbid Sky and they've ended up with months of this empty venue shite. Apparently even Channel 5 aren't too impressed with the numbers for their highlight package shows either. Must be bad when Channel 5 are complaining.

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Chris B said:

For most, this doesn't mean that it's a case of 'WELL, THIS IS IT, I REGISTER MY PROTEST, SIR!', but just a continuing list of reasons to feel bad about watching WWE. As the show becomes less and less fun to watch, there just become fewer reasons to stay loyal.

This is a big part of it - it's a hell of a lot easier to boycott a product when the product's shit in the first place. If you've been toying with the idea of cutting ties, it gets easier to justify when you know you're not missing anything.

And as much as I mentioned about people being starved for live content and just being sat in front of the telly all the time anyway, the extent to which (especially in the US) WWE is habit viewing can't be overestimated, and one thing you can guarantee across the board at the moment is that people's routines are fucked. So even something like watching a certain TV show at a certain time just isn't going to happen the same way.

So much of it is absolutely a failure of WWE's complete failure to adapt their presentation, production or format for the past 15-20 years, though. Everything they're doing now is just highlighting how stale their format has been for years, and all far too late to change it. In an ideal world they'd be able to break up their TV shows with more of their great documentary content, more promos, more "cinematic" stuff like the Boneyard match, but they stick so rigidly to the same format - and have been paid so much for that format - that they aren't going to try and do that, and even if they wanted to they have to produce so many hours of TV a week that they'll never have the time to create that kind of content anyway.

[300]

10 hours ago, Supremo said:

I’m not an expert on ratings, and will oftentimes completely zone out when Meltzer runs through them on Observer Radio, but I’m absolutely convinced this empty arena stuff is going to leave permanent damage.

The story of WWE the last fifteen years or so has been them chipping away at the size of their fanbase by forcing people to fall out of the habit of watching.

Whether it was increasing the number of Pay Per Views to two-a-month at the height of the original brand split, increasing Raw to three hours, increasing the current length of Pay Per Views to about five to six hours or adding NXT to national TV. Every step of the way they’ve made it harder and harder to watch everything, forcing people to skip stuff here and there, which in turn results in people getting used to not watching, then just binning it off entirely.

It already felt like it was at the peak level, where only absolute freaks like me were still watching, and now they’re putting on shows that feel like the training levels on WWE2K, as if we’re waiting for the real show to load.

Once the hardest of hardcores stop trying to keep up you have to wonder just how low the number will go and if it will ever return to what were already record-setting low numbers to begin with. At least if they’d just suspended shows for a while there would’ve been an excitement and anticipation about them returning. Just continuing without fans and putting on some of the worst shows of all time could prove fatal.

All true, but if they had anything that resembled a hot product they wouldn’t be in half the trouble they are now.

[Onyx2]

Imagine your mate texts you. "You've got to watch this amazing new show, it's on every week, 6 hours a week." You're just never going to sell that in the modern world. Not when you can watch any highlights of interest in 10 minutes a week* on YouTube. 

*I'm feeling generous, ok? 

[King Pitcos]

9 hours ago, Onyx2 said:

Imagine your mate texts you. "You've got to watch this amazing new show, it's on every week, 6 hours a week." You're just never going to sell that in the modern world. Not when you can watch any highlights of interest in 10 minutes a week* on YouTube. 

*I'm feeling generous, ok? 

That’s the thing about the TV contracts. They’re supposedly must-watch-live content like sports, but the format is nothing like the big sports leagues where a broadcast is one long game. It only resembles UFC and boxing cards in format, so it lends itself to being consumed piecemeal... and WWE uploads all of the interviews and angles and finishes to YouTube. Both individually and in a five minute recap video.

Only a madman would watch Raw live. A madman who loves adverts and the first 25 minutes of Humberto Carrillo matches.

Edited May 7, 2020 by King Pitcos