WWE Ratings keep Falling
Over the past two weeks, the ratings for WWE Raw were the two lowest for a non-major ratings impacted holiday (July 4th, Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve) since 1997.
During the same period, the ratings for Smackdown, even though moved to Thursday from Friday, a far better night for television, were the two lowest since the move to Syfy. With the exception of some episodes that had massive local preemptions in the final days on MyNetwork TV, the numbers were far lower than any episodes in the history of the series.
Much of this is seasonal. Raw ratings always drop in the fall due to football. Smackdown didn’t have that issue on Fridays, and it traditionally saw increased ratings in the fall, but on Thursday, they will be opposed by the NFL for the next several months. There’s been an axiom that WWE creative is out of touch every September through early January, and then magically, by late January, everyone is a genius.
But that ignores a bigger story. Raw ratings have declined most years since they peaked in the late 90s. To an extent, almost everything in television, due to more options, has also declined. But if you look at the period from January through mid-September, the 2012 to 2013 decline was 1.2%. The 2013 to 2014 decline was 1.6%. The 2014 to 2015 decline is 8.4%. The idea that Smackdown would decline with a move from Friday to Thursday seemed unfathomable, but that happened.
But Smackdown is also in a lame duck period, since it is scheduled to move to the USA Network in January, which, in theory, going to a far higher rated station (for the week ending 9/13, USA averaged 1,587,000 viewers in prime time; Syfy averaged 764,000), should greatly increase the ratings. In addition, the belief is there will be far more promotion and emphasis put on Smackdown, as well as running more Raw-to-Smackdown angles and more appearances by the bigger names on Smackdown at the time of the move.
When it comes to Raw, we are just looking at ratings, not audience. The rating, a percentage of the homes that have USA network that are watching the show, is a ratio where things like cord cutting and declines in availability are factored out. Many people will note that most cable stations are declining in viewership, although some, like FS 1, have shown major growth. But some of those declines in viewership are because less people get the station. So looking at ratings factors that aspect out.
As noted many times, both WWE and UFC, by the nature of their roles in television, are in positions to make more money from television than ever before. At the same time, because the stations want more product because USA is looking to up its weekly average to stay No. 1, and FS 1 does far above its usual numbers with UFC live programming.
At the same time, the amount of televised hours per week are burning out their fan bases. Some look at this year’s UFC as proof that isn’t the case, but the long-term trends indicate otherwise. UFC numbers are up this year in every aspect, but in a star driven business, their star power on top has greatly increased, and that overrides everything. If WWE had similar increases in star power on top, the ratings declines would reverse the same way.
But they haven’t. And when UFC leaves its period of having The Rock and Steve Austin at the same time, as they do with Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor right now, unless new stars of the same level are made, the market will revert back to the patterns from the 2010 peak to 2013. I throw out the bottoming out 2014 because that year was a disaster due to injuries which artificially made things seem worse than they really were, just as this year’s two huge superstar era has changed long-term existing patterns.
I think everyone would agree the three hour Raws are too long, but the company needs the revenue, and the third hour still does far more than USA Network these days will do with other programming. Since USA’s goal is to be No. 1 in cable ratings, it sacrifices higher ad revenue it can get with other programming because Raw, and next year Smackdown, will greatly help the station’s prime time average. USA has fallen greatly overall, not just because of wrestling, but because of a decline in its original programming, and as of the week of 9/13, was in third place behind ESPN and Fox News, up from fifth place the week before. Quite frankly, one can argue that even though wrestling is generating fewer viewers and the powerful advertisers steer clear of the show, it is actually more valuable to USA now than ever before. Even two years ago, USA would have been No. 1 even if Raw moved to another channel. Without Raw, last week USA would have been in 8th place on cable the week of 9/6 and 6th for the week of 9/13.
So, depending on how the television landscape changes over the next few years, even with the declining interest, WWE’s value to USA may be greater than ever, mitigating the negotiating leverage aspect of the significant ratings decline.
So economically, the sky isn’t falling, unless the TV industry itself collapses in some form. And the changing media greatly overrides content issues with weekly television, and almost everything else.
For Raw last week, the rating was an all-time low, and that was concerning. But it was a bad show with mistakes that caused a huge decline in the third hour. The keys were the total overexposure of Seth Rollins, which was corrected this week, and putting New Day and the Prime Time Players in the main event mix, having a match that people didn’t care enough to stay watching until 11 p.m. to see. In addition, nothing was advertised on the show. The tag team division has been devalued for so long that even as entertaining as The New Day is, they are not stars who can be effective at this point in a television main event.
But this week was more concerning. Granted, the NFL made for tougher competition than a strong college game.
The variables are this. Last week was a bad show that had a major third hour turnoff factor, and was also on Labor Day, which does slightly hurt ratings. Last week went against a strong college football game, but the NFL games this week were stronger competition. The Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles drew 13.56 million viewers, ending at 10:17 p.m. The San Francisco 49ers vs. Minnesota Vikings game drew 14.33 million viewers. The prior week’s Ohio State vs. Virginia Tech game did 10.56 million viewers.
But the key is that this week they had built the show around Nikki Bella going for the Divas title record against Charlotte, as well as a tag team title match. Not advertised, but in theory, should have meant far more if people knew about it, was the first time Sting ever wrestled on Raw. While that announcement at the top of the show isn’t going to help overall ratings that much, there still was a third hour drop in the hour with the Divas title match and the first Sting match ever. The decline wasn’t as bad as in hour three last week, but with those two key matches in hour No. 3, it shouldn’t have declined to the level it did.
The positives WWE has right now is that they are really the only game in town to all but a tiny percentage of a wrestling fan base. But in being the only game in town, the popularity of pro wrestling is declining, even as some media sources in recent weeks have made the laughable statements that it is the most popular of any period in history, being manipulated by irrelevant numbers. At the same time, to its most loyal audience, the product is hot when it comes to the big shows, which seems to be a worldwide pattern, since it’s the same thing that is going on with CMLL and AAA in Mexico and with New Japan. You could also argue that boxing, UFC and Bellator fall into this pattern. For the big events, such as WrestleMania and SummerSlam this year, WWE can charge far more than ever before, and be more successful from a live gate perspective. And even with the ratings decline, house shows have held up, although so far in September, the numbers have been, in the words of Big Cass, SAWFT, soft.
The issues are stated weekly and endlessly. The three hours isn’t going to change. The revenue difference, even when you erode overall interest with it, and long-term contracts in place, lock WWE into that.
However, the show can change its predictable pattern. The opening interview segment to set up the show inherently isn’t bad, but it would be better most weeks with half the time. The interviews, with the exception of the elite few, need an overhaul. For one, the verbiage feels overly scripted and when it does, whatever goal or message is lost. The disaster of the Ryback promos the past two weeks may in some fault be his due to delivery, and perhaps somebody like Michael Hayes or Roddy Piper in their primes could have taken the wording he was given and pulled it off, but he is not them. The constant buzzwords may read great in a marketing textbook, but they don’t connect with the audience and are not effective in the goals of the interview, which is to generate more interest in the program.
What’s weird is, and there are always exceptions, but as a general rule, the promos, both believability and effectiveness, of wrestlers in the non-scripted generation blow the current generation out of the water. Having seen this generation’s guys outside the scripted environment, while not all are great, almost all are better unscripted.
There are also issues of context. Throwing out matches, even with big names and being of good quality, with no importance, has its limitations. My turn, your turn booking has created the generation of midcarders. Sting, a midcarder with some natural charisma, became an overnight superstar because he went to a 45 minute draw with Ric Flair on television. But the key was the follow-up. Had Flair then beaten Sting once each of the next two months on television, with a submission in the third match, Sting would have never been the enduring star he was. Similarly, if Undertaker, or Ultimate Warrior lost half the time on television in their first year, they’d have never gotten out of the blocks. Yet, even with Kevin Owens, a guy they were trying to make fast and the most promising talker in developmental, they gave him the big win first, and figured since they gave him that win, they could beat him constantly. So instead of being a top tier superstar, he joins the fun sea of very talented mid-carders, guys that fans know, think of as stars, have good matches, but their ability to move the needle is minimized.
Even though it didn’t work, the creation of records like with Nikki Bella’s streak, put more emphasis on the Divas title than any time in recent memory. The Twin Magic screwjob finish which is fine in certain situations, but somewhat out of context given the type of emphasis on the match, did make sense to build the rematch on the PPV. But the follow-up has to be strong. This isn’t pure sport and shouldn’t be booked like sport. But within its context, it should have meaning. The idea that we’re entertainment and anything goes is fine, but when something isn’t working, it needs to be looked at as to why. The key right now is the ability to create interest and an emotional response. If things are presented as if they don’t matter, in almost every case, they won’t. If they don’t matter to the participant, it’s hard for them to matter to the fan. One of the reasons real sports work is the ramifications, the exhilaration of the win, the disappointment of the loss, and even more, the follow-up. The loser creates a story as to either the mistakes he’s made, what he’s learned and how he’ll change things, or, if it is legitimate based on what happens, blames an outside party for derailing his upward mobility. When upward mobility doesn’t exist, and the context of wins and losses don’t matter, you lose a key interest element.
But you also need variety in a three-hour show. That is, very different personas, which WWE somewhat has, and a wide variety of styles, which WWE has less of than many other wrestling companies with far less resources. But all of those are minor points.
The key is making larger-than-life superstars. Whether it’s Bruno Sammartino and Superstar Graham, or Dusty Rhodes, or Hulk Hogan, or Steve Austin and The Rock, or Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Antonio Inoki, Perro Aguayo, Konnan, Mistico, or Ali, Mayweather, Leonard, or today’s Rousey and McGregor, the boom periods are either created by technological changes or larger-than-life superstars. More then boxing or MMA, pro wrestling has more ability to create them, since they can fully script their storylines and control all their outcomes to maximum benefit. But they haven’t, and for whatever reason, have dropped the ball frequently when the seeds of momentum are there because of having pigeon-holed themselves into a mentality that while certain guys are fine on the show, only a certain type can be that larger than life star. And they’ve muted their value when they are either quivering geeks or guys who are good but not great in presentation who are being controlled or propped by up the authority figures who are the biggest stars on the show. It’s worse when those same figures slip from charming and philanthropic babyface who are the people responsible for giving you your wrestling, and then flip to being heels, almost telling you while watching that you are supposed to think, “She’s this really great person who has to play a bad guy in a few skits on this show.” And then they wonder why the other people in the skits, or the skits themselves, have minimal traction as compared to usual historical levels of the business.
Yet, ironically, staring them in the face is a 5-foot-9 skinny Irishman and a woman who they are desperate to copy, yet the people in charge have absolutely no idea how she got there. And they don’t allow people to be themselves and tell their real stories enough to take advantage of what they are to have them connect at the same level.
The excuse that wrestling isn’t real and thus can’t be as popular would ring less hollow if documentaries were kicking the hell out of screenplays at the box office. And while there are exceptions to every rule, and fantasies are prevalent in movies, you rarely see character and plotline inconsistencies and the muting of character development, or the general level of bad dialogue and poor delivery that you see on Raw. Wrestling at its best should be something you look forward to every week and when it’s over, can’t wait to see what happens next. It should not be something where you feel like you deserve a medal just for being able to sit through it and maintain interest in the third hour.
Keep in mind, that in January, ratings will bounce back, to a degree. In actuality, the early year bounce back in 2015 felt like less than most years, and the pre-football decline was significantly lower to start with than any year since Raw was getting killed by Nitro. So record lows, as we’ve had already the past two weeks, should get even lower, particularly in October when the sports competition gets even stronger.
During the same period, the ratings for Smackdown, even though moved to Thursday from Friday, a far better night for television, were the two lowest since the move to Syfy. With the exception of some episodes that had massive local preemptions in the final days on MyNetwork TV, the numbers were far lower than any episodes in the history of the series.
Much of this is seasonal. Raw ratings always drop in the fall due to football. Smackdown didn’t have that issue on Fridays, and it traditionally saw increased ratings in the fall, but on Thursday, they will be opposed by the NFL for the next several months. There’s been an axiom that WWE creative is out of touch every September through early January, and then magically, by late January, everyone is a genius.
But that ignores a bigger story. Raw ratings have declined most years since they peaked in the late 90s. To an extent, almost everything in television, due to more options, has also declined. But if you look at the period from January through mid-September, the 2012 to 2013 decline was 1.2%. The 2013 to 2014 decline was 1.6%. The 2014 to 2015 decline is 8.4%. The idea that Smackdown would decline with a move from Friday to Thursday seemed unfathomable, but that happened.
But Smackdown is also in a lame duck period, since it is scheduled to move to the USA Network in January, which, in theory, going to a far higher rated station (for the week ending 9/13, USA averaged 1,587,000 viewers in prime time; Syfy averaged 764,000), should greatly increase the ratings. In addition, the belief is there will be far more promotion and emphasis put on Smackdown, as well as running more Raw-to-Smackdown angles and more appearances by the bigger names on Smackdown at the time of the move.
When it comes to Raw, we are just looking at ratings, not audience. The rating, a percentage of the homes that have USA network that are watching the show, is a ratio where things like cord cutting and declines in availability are factored out. Many people will note that most cable stations are declining in viewership, although some, like FS 1, have shown major growth. But some of those declines in viewership are because less people get the station. So looking at ratings factors that aspect out.
As noted many times, both WWE and UFC, by the nature of their roles in television, are in positions to make more money from television than ever before. At the same time, because the stations want more product because USA is looking to up its weekly average to stay No. 1, and FS 1 does far above its usual numbers with UFC live programming.
At the same time, the amount of televised hours per week are burning out their fan bases. Some look at this year’s UFC as proof that isn’t the case, but the long-term trends indicate otherwise. UFC numbers are up this year in every aspect, but in a star driven business, their star power on top has greatly increased, and that overrides everything. If WWE had similar increases in star power on top, the ratings declines would reverse the same way.
But they haven’t. And when UFC leaves its period of having The Rock and Steve Austin at the same time, as they do with Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor right now, unless new stars of the same level are made, the market will revert back to the patterns from the 2010 peak to 2013. I throw out the bottoming out 2014 because that year was a disaster due to injuries which artificially made things seem worse than they really were, just as this year’s two huge superstar era has changed long-term existing patterns.
I think everyone would agree the three hour Raws are too long, but the company needs the revenue, and the third hour still does far more than USA Network these days will do with other programming. Since USA’s goal is to be No. 1 in cable ratings, it sacrifices higher ad revenue it can get with other programming because Raw, and next year Smackdown, will greatly help the station’s prime time average. USA has fallen greatly overall, not just because of wrestling, but because of a decline in its original programming, and as of the week of 9/13, was in third place behind ESPN and Fox News, up from fifth place the week before. Quite frankly, one can argue that even though wrestling is generating fewer viewers and the powerful advertisers steer clear of the show, it is actually more valuable to USA now than ever before. Even two years ago, USA would have been No. 1 even if Raw moved to another channel. Without Raw, last week USA would have been in 8th place on cable the week of 9/6 and 6th for the week of 9/13.
So, depending on how the television landscape changes over the next few years, even with the declining interest, WWE’s value to USA may be greater than ever, mitigating the negotiating leverage aspect of the significant ratings decline.
So economically, the sky isn’t falling, unless the TV industry itself collapses in some form. And the changing media greatly overrides content issues with weekly television, and almost everything else.
For Raw last week, the rating was an all-time low, and that was concerning. But it was a bad show with mistakes that caused a huge decline in the third hour. The keys were the total overexposure of Seth Rollins, which was corrected this week, and putting New Day and the Prime Time Players in the main event mix, having a match that people didn’t care enough to stay watching until 11 p.m. to see. In addition, nothing was advertised on the show. The tag team division has been devalued for so long that even as entertaining as The New Day is, they are not stars who can be effective at this point in a television main event.
But this week was more concerning. Granted, the NFL made for tougher competition than a strong college game.
The variables are this. Last week was a bad show that had a major third hour turnoff factor, and was also on Labor Day, which does slightly hurt ratings. Last week went against a strong college football game, but the NFL games this week were stronger competition. The Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles drew 13.56 million viewers, ending at 10:17 p.m. The San Francisco 49ers vs. Minnesota Vikings game drew 14.33 million viewers. The prior week’s Ohio State vs. Virginia Tech game did 10.56 million viewers.
But the key is that this week they had built the show around Nikki Bella going for the Divas title record against Charlotte, as well as a tag team title match. Not advertised, but in theory, should have meant far more if people knew about it, was the first time Sting ever wrestled on Raw. While that announcement at the top of the show isn’t going to help overall ratings that much, there still was a third hour drop in the hour with the Divas title match and the first Sting match ever. The decline wasn’t as bad as in hour three last week, but with those two key matches in hour No. 3, it shouldn’t have declined to the level it did.
The positives WWE has right now is that they are really the only game in town to all but a tiny percentage of a wrestling fan base. But in being the only game in town, the popularity of pro wrestling is declining, even as some media sources in recent weeks have made the laughable statements that it is the most popular of any period in history, being manipulated by irrelevant numbers. At the same time, to its most loyal audience, the product is hot when it comes to the big shows, which seems to be a worldwide pattern, since it’s the same thing that is going on with CMLL and AAA in Mexico and with New Japan. You could also argue that boxing, UFC and Bellator fall into this pattern. For the big events, such as WrestleMania and SummerSlam this year, WWE can charge far more than ever before, and be more successful from a live gate perspective. And even with the ratings decline, house shows have held up, although so far in September, the numbers have been, in the words of Big Cass, SAWFT, soft.
The issues are stated weekly and endlessly. The three hours isn’t going to change. The revenue difference, even when you erode overall interest with it, and long-term contracts in place, lock WWE into that.
However, the show can change its predictable pattern. The opening interview segment to set up the show inherently isn’t bad, but it would be better most weeks with half the time. The interviews, with the exception of the elite few, need an overhaul. For one, the verbiage feels overly scripted and when it does, whatever goal or message is lost. The disaster of the Ryback promos the past two weeks may in some fault be his due to delivery, and perhaps somebody like Michael Hayes or Roddy Piper in their primes could have taken the wording he was given and pulled it off, but he is not them. The constant buzzwords may read great in a marketing textbook, but they don’t connect with the audience and are not effective in the goals of the interview, which is to generate more interest in the program.
What’s weird is, and there are always exceptions, but as a general rule, the promos, both believability and effectiveness, of wrestlers in the non-scripted generation blow the current generation out of the water. Having seen this generation’s guys outside the scripted environment, while not all are great, almost all are better unscripted.
There are also issues of context. Throwing out matches, even with big names and being of good quality, with no importance, has its limitations. My turn, your turn booking has created the generation of midcarders. Sting, a midcarder with some natural charisma, became an overnight superstar because he went to a 45 minute draw with Ric Flair on television. But the key was the follow-up. Had Flair then beaten Sting once each of the next two months on television, with a submission in the third match, Sting would have never been the enduring star he was. Similarly, if Undertaker, or Ultimate Warrior lost half the time on television in their first year, they’d have never gotten out of the blocks. Yet, even with Kevin Owens, a guy they were trying to make fast and the most promising talker in developmental, they gave him the big win first, and figured since they gave him that win, they could beat him constantly. So instead of being a top tier superstar, he joins the fun sea of very talented mid-carders, guys that fans know, think of as stars, have good matches, but their ability to move the needle is minimized.
Even though it didn’t work, the creation of records like with Nikki Bella’s streak, put more emphasis on the Divas title than any time in recent memory. The Twin Magic screwjob finish which is fine in certain situations, but somewhat out of context given the type of emphasis on the match, did make sense to build the rematch on the PPV. But the follow-up has to be strong. This isn’t pure sport and shouldn’t be booked like sport. But within its context, it should have meaning. The idea that we’re entertainment and anything goes is fine, but when something isn’t working, it needs to be looked at as to why. The key right now is the ability to create interest and an emotional response. If things are presented as if they don’t matter, in almost every case, they won’t. If they don’t matter to the participant, it’s hard for them to matter to the fan. One of the reasons real sports work is the ramifications, the exhilaration of the win, the disappointment of the loss, and even more, the follow-up. The loser creates a story as to either the mistakes he’s made, what he’s learned and how he’ll change things, or, if it is legitimate based on what happens, blames an outside party for derailing his upward mobility. When upward mobility doesn’t exist, and the context of wins and losses don’t matter, you lose a key interest element.
But you also need variety in a three-hour show. That is, very different personas, which WWE somewhat has, and a wide variety of styles, which WWE has less of than many other wrestling companies with far less resources. But all of those are minor points.
The key is making larger-than-life superstars. Whether it’s Bruno Sammartino and Superstar Graham, or Dusty Rhodes, or Hulk Hogan, or Steve Austin and The Rock, or Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Antonio Inoki, Perro Aguayo, Konnan, Mistico, or Ali, Mayweather, Leonard, or today’s Rousey and McGregor, the boom periods are either created by technological changes or larger-than-life superstars. More then boxing or MMA, pro wrestling has more ability to create them, since they can fully script their storylines and control all their outcomes to maximum benefit. But they haven’t, and for whatever reason, have dropped the ball frequently when the seeds of momentum are there because of having pigeon-holed themselves into a mentality that while certain guys are fine on the show, only a certain type can be that larger than life star. And they’ve muted their value when they are either quivering geeks or guys who are good but not great in presentation who are being controlled or propped by up the authority figures who are the biggest stars on the show. It’s worse when those same figures slip from charming and philanthropic babyface who are the people responsible for giving you your wrestling, and then flip to being heels, almost telling you while watching that you are supposed to think, “She’s this really great person who has to play a bad guy in a few skits on this show.” And then they wonder why the other people in the skits, or the skits themselves, have minimal traction as compared to usual historical levels of the business.
Yet, ironically, staring them in the face is a 5-foot-9 skinny Irishman and a woman who they are desperate to copy, yet the people in charge have absolutely no idea how she got there. And they don’t allow people to be themselves and tell their real stories enough to take advantage of what they are to have them connect at the same level.
The excuse that wrestling isn’t real and thus can’t be as popular would ring less hollow if documentaries were kicking the hell out of screenplays at the box office. And while there are exceptions to every rule, and fantasies are prevalent in movies, you rarely see character and plotline inconsistencies and the muting of character development, or the general level of bad dialogue and poor delivery that you see on Raw. Wrestling at its best should be something you look forward to every week and when it’s over, can’t wait to see what happens next. It should not be something where you feel like you deserve a medal just for being able to sit through it and maintain interest in the third hour.
Keep in mind, that in January, ratings will bounce back, to a degree. In actuality, the early year bounce back in 2015 felt like less than most years, and the pre-football decline was significantly lower to start with than any year since Raw was getting killed by Nitro. So record lows, as we’ve had already the past two weeks, should get even lower, particularly in October when the sports competition gets even stronger.