WWE Raw ratings for Jan. 16 show: Troubling trend continues

But just about the number of weeks WWE has had a second hour dip as a regular occurrence. Turns out, they’ve had it as a regularity for 23 weeks, not eight, but if you look at the ratings reports from Cageside itself, you’ll find that it was still an irregularity to see this kind of thing before that time period.

Here’s a report from November 7th, 2011.

Here’s another report from 2/21/11.

You still had basic cable channels which were mostly crap or syndicated shows (no good original programming in the primetime hours) and then the premium cable channels which weren’t airing their hit shows on Monday nights.

Basic cable channels are always mostly crap even today, and always come with relatively few channels. Your argument doesn’t hold up here because WWE airs on USA, a network which has always aired on basic cable, which has tons of hit shows to draw attention the other shows it airs: shows like Covert Affairs, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and Suits all get fantastic ratings, much better ratings than RAW.

You would figure with all that star power behind their back, USA could find some way to get people to watch RAW if it was any good: but not only have RAW’s ratings steadily declined, the RAW where Zack Ryder took 10 minutes to change a fucking tire did worse numbers than the NCIS rerun that led into RAW.

It’s entirely WWE’s fault that their ratings have been tanking, don’t pretend otherwise.

Thus, they went out at every opportunity they could to seek it out. The adults kept in touch too because of the more mature content, but they never loved it the way the average pre and entering pubescence male did.

Nowadays, because it’s just for kids, while a few kids who are likely the children of wrestling fans still tune in, most kids let it pass them by because it’s seen as desperately uncool and nowhere near dangerous enough for their tastes. Not to mention, as much as I rag on the guy, Hulk Hogan had an appeal with children of all social dysfunctions and even adults that Cena is antithetic towards. You would never see a non WCW fan adult boo Hogan under any circumstances even today, and even when he came back in the death throes of the Attitude Era, he got pops from WWF fans of all colors, Cena has never done that.

More importantly, do you remember being a male 9 year old.

I sure as hell do. I was mean, judgmental, easily prone to violence, and loved action related anything, so pro wrestling became a huge interest. If a product intentionally presented itself as watered down, safe, or for kids, I wanted to avoid it and get on to finding epic displays of action, recklessness, and violence. Same with every other male 9 year old I knew at the time, or every other male 9 year old I’ve met before or since.

I’m not proud of who I was, but it doesn’t change facts.

business is like a sine graph.. WWe is on the downside.. but when will it stop?

Ignoring you’r unnecessary ellipses, and ignoring the fact that ellipses should always be made up of three periods, business only make a rebound if they provide a necessary function to society. Sad as it may be, people don’t need professional wrestling to have a functioning society, or even just a fun society.

There’s a small chance some MMA guys will try to make money by staging worked fights for entertainment purposes, but business is already doing fine with just a few shoot fights rather than many fake ones, so there’s no incentive for the MMA promoters to work like that, and there’s almost no chance there ever will be.

It would take a long while, but the PW biz could actually be in better shape.. since the overall monopoly would be gone.. again.. cyclic.. and going back to its roots.. with the Indy’s.

You’re not really grasping the full implications.

Wrestling can’t afford to take a long hiatus. New fans need to get interested not just to generate money, but to bring in new wrestlers. All the world’s best, and even lower tier athletic talents make far more money for non worked sports that don’t demand the same sacrifice from their bodies. The only way to get them to change their mind is by making the pay so good that they’ll take the risk, which is now impossible thanks to the diminishing returns, or to breed new fans by creating a great product that is watched from far and wide, which is also impossible because with the failure of WWE and greater failure of TNA on USA and Spike, putting a pro wrestling show on nationally syndicated television is far less desirable than just about any other option available to network execs.

Most importantly, in order to become a great or even good pro wrestler, it’s important to work steadily with great and good pro wrestlers, guys who are ten and even twenty year vets of the business. The problem is, with the exception of a few oddballs out there, the only way someone would become a ten or twenty year pro wrestling vet is through good to great pay for a reliable company. Unless ROH becomes nationally syndicated, that won’t be an option anymore.

PPV’s are down due to illegal streams not lack of popularity.

If this were any sort of viable excuse, UFC wouldn’t have had three PPV’s that did over one million buys in 2010, nor would it be true that 11 UFC PPV’s in 2010 did better domestic numbers than any WWE PPV worldwide number this year or the previous except for Wrestlemania since the 2006 Royal Rumble.

" Despite the challenging economic headwinds, both domestically and abroad, we generated increased profits across a majority of our businesses, with the main exception being our film business which we continue to monitor and refine to improve future performance."

Aside from the fact that you’re listing a quote from the company chairman, which contains no numbers of any kind, as a source, you’re not keeping in mind what he’s saying.

Vince didn’t say they’re generating a lot of money, he said that WWE is “more profitable.” This is largely because of the large amount of cost cutting WWE has done in the past several years, such as cutting pyro out of shows, cutting out PPV sets, having less celebrities on TV, and cutting out the recap videos they used to show at the end of their PPV’s. Not to mention the fact that most of WWE’s top paid guys are now either dead, retired, or retiring, with only Cena, Punk, and Orton replacing high paid guys like Eddie Guerrero, Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, Edge, Chris Benoit, JBL, RVD, Tommy Dreamer, Jeff Hardy, etc. Not to mention the effectively retired guys like Mysterio, Undertaker, and Jericho.