AEW Saturday Collision

[BomberPat]

7 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Especially idiotic when we have no idea how TNT will be measuring it as a success or not. The ratings might not look good to us but to TNT they might actually be exactly what they were expecting and hoping for.

And there's the rub, really. Ratings aren't just increasingly a bit of an irrelevance in terms of tracking the genuine audience, thanks to streaming and other ways of watching, they're also increasingly not the most important metric for the networks either. Without us knowing what metrics TNT are using to determine whether it's a success or not, or what they expect or want from it, neither you, I, The Coach or Mickey Numbers on Twitter has any real insight to offer here. I daresay TNT probably have a better idea of what does or doesn't work on Saturday night TV than we do. 

15 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Yeah, definitely a weird thing to say when Georgia had one of the most famous wrestling shows ever on a Saturday.

Georgia, Memphis, British wrestling, WCW Saturday Night, Saturday Night's Main Event, CMLL, probably a ton more I'm forgetting. 

8 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

But what about wrestling shoes? Probably explains why MMA has become so popular on Saturdays. Need Marina Shafir and some old school Samoans stat!

It's a tremendous typo - FSM once had an article on showmanship in wrestling, which included the caption "The Undertaker never fails to put on a shoe". I'll still be chuckling at that one on my deathbed.

[SuperBacon]

7 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Georgia, Memphis, British wrestling, WCW Saturday Night, Saturday Night's Main Event, CMLL, probably a ton more I'm forgetting. 

Celebrity Wrestling on ITV

Discussions on ratings is by far the most boring thing on this forum. Well, just behind fantasy booking.

[LaGoosh]

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

And there's the rub, really. Ratings aren't just increasingly a bit of an irrelevance in terms of tracking the genuine audience, thanks to streaming and other ways of watching, they're also increasingly not the most important metric for the networks either. Without us knowing what metrics TNT are using to determine whether it's a success or not, or what they expect or want from it, neither you, I, The Coach or Mickey Numbers on Twitter has any real insight to offer here. I daresay TNT probably have a better idea of what does or doesn't work on Saturday night TV than we do. 

Especially when pretty much any other form of telly is significantly more expensive to put on than wrestling. Anything else and TNT have to spend millions just to get something up and running with no idea whether it will even be successful or not. For wrestling they just have to spend a flat fee (which will be a lot of money to AEW but not a huge amount for TNT) and they've got a steady, dependable two hours of TV every week all year long with basically no production or residual costs to worry about. It's probably the lowest risk to decent gains programming they could put on at that time slot.

[Infinity Land]

It's not exact, but typically a network would make half its money from advertising and half from carriage fees. If TNT was just a rerun channel with some sports between Oct-June. All it does is encourage cordcutting leading to fewer subs and the cable/satellite providers to offer a lower fee.

Even last Saturday's "bad" number beats over half a year of what TNT would have been putting on during Saturday primetime. Plus its original programming that can't be found elsewhere.

[Zaheer]

For the last 20 years people on here have been going on about WWE ratings getting lower and lower. It's getting worse, people don't care, blah blah.

Meanwhile WWE's income and revenue grows year upon year.

I think we should leave this conversation to the TV execs and millionaires, and accept the fact we are absolutely clueless on the matter?

 

[David]

9 hours ago, Jesse said:

Then in defence of what David is saying - they are a terrible metric for judging anything's popularity, or even as an outsider trying to judge what the ratings mean to the studio given so much else that falls into that we have no way of knowing about. Generally, if they're still giving them money and keeping the same amount of content or asking for more it seems like things are going good. Staring at the ratings and trying to figure out what that means to Warner Bros without any additional insider information is about as useful as getting your divining rod out.

I think this is key. The viewing figures, as terrible as they are, need to be taken in context with other factors. Factors that we're likely not privy to. 

I think fans (on social media for the most part) just latch onto these numbers in isolation to either bash or support their favourite brand. It also seems to be something that is mainly a wrestling fan thing. I don't see fans of other shows discussing the week to week fluctuation of the viewing figures. 

Anyway, very informative answer. Thanks!

[The King Of Swing]

Fans of regular TV definitely used to talk about ratings (especially when IMBD forums were still a thing) but ratings talk has mostly died off over the years.

Wrestling fans seem to be the last holdout. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by The King Of Swing

[Infinity Land]

Digital Spy forums has had a long running series of Ratings threads for domestic ratings and even have them for US ratings. People like numbers.

[David]

Yeah, I'm generally meaning on social media. I know that specialist forums (such as this, funnily enough) would have ratings-themed discussions, but it seems to be every second post about wrestling on social media is ratings. 

[Guest]

I watched this last night (I'm one of those weirdos who waits til it's on the ITV-X app to watch it), and it's weird to see people flipping out about this show, three episodes in. There was always going to be a drop-off when the big hook for episode #1 was "CM Punk's first match back after all the mad shit happened", so the idea that it's a failure because it hasn't maintained that initial number is laughable. They can't be blamed for not being able to magic up a second hook as big as that. There's definitely things to address (where's what was presumably Punk's AEW title that he was carrying in that bag? why did he pass up the chance to confront recognized champion MJF? - that's all been quietly brushed under the rug) but overall that was just a good, solid wrestling show. Four good matches. It was about the same ratio of in-ring and non-wrestling stuff as the average Dynamite so I don't understand the "just a wrestling show" critique. I can understand the "feels like a B-show/Rampage" critique more but since a lot of these guys have been starved of TV time it's always going to take time to develop things worth caring about.

In the meantime, I just enjoyed the solid TV wrestling matches and I feel like I'm picking up what they're trying to present here - no Elite crap, no Orange Cassidy, no evolving-the-biz undertones just wrestling presented pretty much as it used to be. MJF is much better when it doesn't feel like he's trying to keep up with a Jungle Boy or a Guevara and just goes old school with it. Page, a guy I've never cared about prior to watching this, showed some nice hometown fire. Juice & Starks actually did a leapfrog dropdown spot which lead to a trip rather than being a dull & wanky exhibition of athleticism, credit for that. Starks is an excellent babyface too. The Christian Cage/Luchasaurus (change that fucking name though) stuff is really excellent, even if I don't care about Spears. Good main between two veteran legends, simple heat with the injury angle & reasons to tune in next week. What's not to like? Okay, Kevin Kelly being shite and them still not being able to put out an interesting women's match, but that stuff aside I really enjoyed Collision.

Edited July 7, 2023 by sj5522

[69MeDon]

On the ratings, the issue is if WBD sees the rating as worth the increase in rights fees AEW is going to want when renegotiating ($1bn over the course of the contract, if you're buying the rumours) for producing another two hours of first-run TV for the network (on top of the three other hours they already provide, plus whatever the fuck is happening with BoTB now) vs the rating they'd get in the same time slot if they just stuck some movie on or similar.

Edited July 8, 2023 by 69MeDon

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

On the subject of interesting bits on Collision....Ethan Page - great promo and shows that he deserves to be well away from the Hardy crap. Only bit that was a bit questionable was his 'I'm a company man' spiel when he was going against them with American Top Team not so long ago. Either way, really enjoyed him and nice to see him doing something without all the shite he's been lumped with for the last year or so.

[Vamp]

I'm not sure wrestling fans are anymore ratings obsessed than Doctor Who fans. 

[69MeDon]

Pretty strong card tonight. Given how much I enjoyed Punk vs Kojima - given Punk had been out nine months - I reckon him vs Joe is going to BANG. Hopefully, anyway. Plus the tag title match is likely to be great, too.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Someone, somewhere who’s job it is to manage AEW’s comms and reputation is screaming into a towel about talent engaging with ratings discussions on Twitter.