For those who love or loathe WWE’s new 24/7 title you can now shift your praise or anger over to USA Network.
Two episodes in and the 24/7 title has already given viewers some of the more memorable moments of the night. A new report states the idea to bring a new title into the mix did not come from the WWE.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required and encouraged), Dave Meltzer reports that the 24/7 title was part of a laundry list of items given to WWE from the USA Network.
“In recent weeks, the ratings for Raw’s third hour got bad enough that WWE recognized they had to do something. The big move was basically to allow the top stars from Smackdown to appear on Raw, and to make sure Smackdown doesn’t become a secondary show while it’s getting ready to move to FOX, to do the same. USA Network of late was sending in all kinds of ideas to WWE to bring up the third hour ratings. One person with knowledge of the story said the ideas were all terrible, but the 24/7 idea was the best one and McMahon knew he had to take one of them. While the idea is 24/7, Foley in announcing it said that it would be there for the third hour of Raw, which made no sense if it can be defended at any time. But that’s the reason he said it. I guess it’ll be mostly part of the third hour even though the idea is can be defended at any time.”
The thing that sticks here is that the majority of USA Network’s ideas were terrible? Has this source watched WWE over the past two months as ratings continue to sink? WWE has trotted out so many half baked creative ideas in recent weeks, the thought of USA executives having even worse ideas sounds just a little bit off.
Maybe because the goal posts were moved so far back, but one week into the 24/7 title experiment, ratings for both Raw and SmackDown were up this week.
In need of creative help, should WWE be taking in more ideas from their TV network partners like USA and FOX, or is that just a recipe for disaster down the road?