| I think you could argue that entertainment spending declines with the economy, which would explain in part WWE's decline, but technically that should only affect PPV buyrates and perhaps the RAW rating (since PPVs cost money and RAW is only on cable). But since Smackdown!'s ratings have declined as well, you can't really argue that people aren't willing to either spend money on PPVs or to buy cable (the prices of which are coming way down.)
Look at wrestling like you would any other TV show - it gets ratings when people are interested in the content. When interest lags, the ratings fall and the product is said to be in decline. Just b/c WWE has had ups and downs in ratings doesn't necessarily mean that viewer interest in wrestling operates in cycles.
You could argue that WWE's key demographic has gotten older and doesn't watch as much wrestling. The natural argument to that would be that this demographic would be filled as younger fans got older and got more interested. Hence the issue - if content is stale, you're not securing new fans. This gets even worse if you rehash old angles and wrestlers that the older demographic (which we agree suffers from a declining viewership as a natural process).
If you stick w/the demographic angle, you can blame the decline in ratings on the fact that WWE is trying to court people who are watching less and less wrestling as they get older while losing new fans in the process. WWE needs to overhaul the product and stir things up (and by that I do not mean another Billy/Chuck storyline) to get new fans interested. Vince tries to do this by courting mainstream entertainment, but it's hardly a guarantee for viewership.
In conclusion, while you can't claim that wrestling is a cyclical business (something I once believed in), you can argue that the demographic that watches wrestling is indeed cyclical - old fans tune out, new fans tune in. But this cycle only takes place if the product is strong enough to attract the younger end of the demographic while remaining somewhat palatable to the older end of the demographic (you don't want to shoe them out the door, especially if they're having kids that one day will watch the programming.) Regardless, WWE has to address the fact that Hogan, Piper, Steiner, and the rest of the Geriatric Allstars aren't going to bring home the bacon for teenagers who didn't grow up watching them in their prime. |