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The Official UKFF RAW thread (part 2)...


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They'll turn it around in time for the new TV deal, whenever the current one expires. They're bound to get less for it, but you can be sure they've accounted for that with dirty oil smeared peacock feathers and other revenue streams. It wouldn't surprise me beyond that if Raw wasn't even booked  anymore to be watched in the traditional sit down manner. They're probably fully aware they're stitching together a bunch of YouTube clips of varying potential and shoving it out onto dead air once a week. It's essentially a three hour premier for social media content. 

Does their streaming business need Raw to sell it? Hardly. If you're willing to buy a subscription, you're probably already watching it online. Does their house business need it? I doubt it. Again the brand's awash on your devices and feeds now. People would run after Mo Salah's car in parts of the world where the premier league doesn't have a TV deal. 

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13 hours ago, Supremo said:

Have you watched the show in the past three to five years? One of the biggest problems is that all they do is feature, “actual wrestling with heels, faces and a fight.” More often than not that actual wrestling with heels, faces and a fight will span multiple segments and go through numerous ad breaks. It’s boring as fuck. Honestly, my number one recommendation would be to feature less actual wrestling with heels, faces and a fight.

One point I would make on this is that they don't really have actual heels any more. Unless it's the finish, WWE don't allow their heels to cheat. Which means they're not doing pokes to the eyes, low blows, using the ropes for leverage, or anything else that would add heat to the match by giving them an unfair advantage. It's one of the reasons - arguably the biggest - why all the wrestling on TV is so dull and meaningless, because you can count the number of wrestlers who get heat on one hand, and it's through no fault of their own.

Similarly, in any kind of No DQ situation, when a heel uses a weapon, or double-teams a face, or does anything untoward, the babyface announcers shouldn't be shouting "IT'S ALL LEGAL!", they should still be pointing out how dastardly and vicious the heel is, and it should fall only to a heel announcer to use "it's all legal" as an excuse.

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1 hour ago, Winston said:

Can we use the ratings as measurement? Aren't they the worst ever.

Compared to what? 10, 20 years ago? Because TV Ratings in general are massively down due to the way the world now views TV which now contains many streaming options we didn't have in the past. While they can sell advertising space, WWE will have a network contract because it is cheap TV compared to scripted shows, and there is no downtime on it.

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54 minutes ago, andrew "the ref" coyne said:

Of course. But seeing them in isolation without taking into context other measurements is naĂŻve considering we're in a era where watching traditional tv is a dying model.

The amusing thing being that the transition to streamed service TV means people can now choose to watch 3 hours of their favourite show at a time, whereas WWE have been forcing it upon people for years. I can’t imagine watching 3 hours of anything a week just to keep up with all the characters/storylines lest I fall behind.

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29 minutes ago, air_raid said:

The amusing thing being that the transition to streamed service TV means people can now choose to watch 3 hours of their favourite show at a time, whereas WWE have been forcing it upon people for years. I can’t imagine watching 3 hours of anything a week just to keep up with all the characters/storylines lest I fall behind.

Very true, but at the same time, Eastenders has run an omnibus on a Sunday that goes on for 2.5 hours and my mum used to sit through that old bollocks every week for years. It was only when the characters/stories got stale she lost all interest. Which I guess is the same as most wrestling fans. For most, when they kill off Phil Mitchell, it'll be like pulling the plug on your childhood.

 

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When they kill off Phil Mitchell, the UKFF is going to go down with one of those server errors for the week out of respect. 

Edited by Gay as FOOK
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2 hours ago, air_raid said:

The amusing thing being that the transition to streamed service TV means people can now choose to watch 3 hours of their favourite show at a time, whereas WWE have been forcing it upon people for years. I can’t imagine watching 3 hours of anything a week just to keep up with all the characters/storylines lest I fall behind.

Isn't half the problem that actually no one really needs to watch Raw to even keep up with stuff? There's no real urgency there. You can catch up next week or at the next PPV on their packages or whatever else. Although I'm pretty much the same with Eastenders - if I see my wife watching it, it takes about 2 mins to catch up on whatever's been going on for months and suddenly it's like you never missed a thing.

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21 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Isn't half the problem that actually no one really needs to watch Raw to even keep up with stuff? There's no real urgency there. You can catch up next week or at the next PPV on their packages or whatever else. Although I'm pretty much the same with Eastenders - if I see my wife watching it, it takes about 2 mins to catch up on whatever's been going on for months and suddenly it's like you never missed a thing.

This. Why would I watch 3 hours of Raw when I can read a review on a news site, and catch the clips I want to see on YouTube? We never had access to those back in the early to mid 90s (at least not to the same level as now). 

Hence why looking at the ratings as a sole measurement is foolish. Statistic on YouTube, Social Media Channels, Network Numbers etc are also taking in as a barometer. 

Hell even Wrestlemania. I had planned to watch it, but then I got tempted to read the results and watch a highlight clip of Rhea Ripley getting DDT'ed to the apron. Job done. I'm up to date.

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23 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Isn't half the problem that actually no one really needs to watch Raw to even keep up with stuff? There's no real urgency there. You can catch up next week or at the next PPV on their packages or whatever else. Although I'm pretty much the same with Eastenders - if I see my wife watching it, it takes about 2 mins to catch up on whatever's been going on for months and suddenly it's like you never missed a thing.

I haven't watched WWE weekly TV in years, and it's never felt like I've missed anything when I watch the PPVs. Quite often, I'm left wondering if anything changed from one PPV to the next.

In Wrestlemania's case, I would say that watching weekly TV would have been actually detrimental to the show we got. The hype packages made for Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks made it look like a historic match that stood on its own merits, not as a story that had borne out between "can they co-exist?" tag team nonsense and Reginald the sommelier. 

Something I found quite surprising in contrast when I did a rewatch of PPVs from 2001 on the Network is how quickly things changed, and how much did happen on the TV shows between PPVs - between Wrestlemania 2001 and Backlash you had the formation of the Two Man Power Trip, at Judgment Day Jericho & Benoit become number one contenders for the tag team titles, but by the next PPV they've won and lost them and the tag title match is between the Dudley Boyz and Kane and Spike Dudley. 

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I think TV Ratings are almost not important anymore, obviously they matter to a degree but social media seems to play just as big as a factor in terms of 'success' . They can always spin "Ratings may see low but we are number one trending on twitter every week so people are talking about the show on your network"

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27 minutes ago, theringmaster said:

I think TV Ratings are almost not important anymore, obviously they matter to a degree but social media seems to play just as big as a factor in terms of 'success' . They can always spin "Ratings may see low but we are number one trending on twitter every week so people are talking about the show on your network"

Well they'll need to be at a certain level for the TV networks to want to fork out the big bucks. So while yeah it's definitely not the same as it was, ratings are important for TV deals and TV deals are the thing that keep WWE, AEW, Impact and ROH paying the bills. 

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3 hours ago, marc2j said:

Very true, but at the same time, Eastenders has run an omnibus on a Sunday that goes on for 2.5 hours and my mum used to sit through that old bollocks every week for years. It was only when the characters/stories got stale she lost all interest. Which I guess is the same as most wrestling fans. For most, when they kill off Phil Mitchell, it'll be like pulling the plug on your childhood.

 

 

2 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

When they kill off Phil Mitchell, the UKFF is going to go down with one of those server errors for the week out of respect. 

 

2 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Isn't half the problem that actually no one really needs to watch Raw to even keep up with stuff? There's no real urgency there. You can catch up next week or at the next PPV on their packages or whatever else. Although I'm pretty much the same with Eastenders - if I see my wife watching it, it takes about 2 mins to catch up on whatever's been going on for months and suddenly it's like you never missed a thing.

I think I’m on the wrong forum.

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Well Raw was awful again this week.

There is just no motivation or reason to sit through three hours of it. Nothing of any interest happens and everyone is just back to being on the same level again (other than maybe Lashley, who I don't think was even on the show this week); it just feel like within a few weeks, Wrestler A beats Wrestler B, then B beats A, then there is a tag match where A beats B, then a rematch of that tag match were B beats A, and so on (everyone has to beat everyone else). No thought is put into anything and it is just really badly written and put together (from the promos, to the matches, to the camera work, to the stale look of the show).

There is just no reason to care about any of the wrestlers or "storylines" on the show. Riddle beat Orton, Elias beat Kofi, Bad Bunny's friend beat Miz, Naomi/Lana beat Baszler, Asuka beat Charlotte (via distraction of course); but really, who cares? Retribution lost their masks, Alexa Bliss has a doll, Charlotte hit a ref and has been fined 100k..... *shrug*

Don't get me wrong, this is nothing new (it has been the same for months, if not years), but it's just frustrating to waste time watching Raw (even if I FFW though most of it at this stage).

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1 hour ago, DJM said:

Don't get me wrong, this is nothing new (it has been the same for months, if not years), but it's just frustrating to waste time watching Raw (even if I FFW though most of it at this stage).

I’ve reached the point where I don’t even read recaps of the show anymore. I’ll maybe catch some clips of the show on YouTube, but I don’t go out of my way to see them. 

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