Causes of the rating drops

Blitzkrieg

Going back to what KJay had said in an earlier thread, he said that wrestling is not in a down period. There are 4 seperate shows in North America that are all doing pretty well and are all supported heavily by their networks. I agreed that it was a good sign, but I also stated that it's probably a lot of the same people watching all of the shows.

So, I went and did some research and this is what I found..

1. RAW was at it's peak from arguably 1998 to around 2001 when the ratings started to drop. It didn't reach rock bottom until about 2003 or so and has since climbed up a tad but is still pretty low in comparison to the attitude era ratings.

What do you think the major reasons are for this? What's the key? Is the loss of star power, lack of great writing, all of the above, or do you think there's something more to it? Can it ever get to where it once was without a rating war, because to be fair to WWE their ratings did carry over for quite some time after WCW was bought out.

2. SD! has reached an all-time low this year. It's getting consistantly in the 2's for ratings when it was always at least above a 3. Since I haven't been watching all that much, what is going on there? Why are people choosing now as the time to tune out?

3. ECW started out really strong but then tailed off.. That was to be expected, but the last month or so they've dipped below 2.0 in the rating.. What can ECW do to keep this going? The old stars of ECW are washed up and are clearly not the answer.

K Jay

A new question could be has the internet finally killed taped wrestling shows? Let's be honest the two shows out of the four that where live were doing best (Raw & ECW) now ECW has dropped off due to tapings, Smackdown has nose-dived and as much as everyone loves the first 2 hours of a TNA PPV no-one gives a tiny rats ass about Impact.

I had a sig, once.

Blitzkrieg

You know.. I completely forgot about ECW being taped now. That makes a lt of sense.

You see, Crocker and others will try to tell you that SD! is written as well as RAW if not better.. but for me it's about two things. 1. Most of my favorite wrestlers are on RAW and 2. RAW is LIVE and SD! isn't..

I can't sit there on a Friday night even if I'm home and get all jazzed up for SD!. I do however, catch TNA quite a bit because it's on late on Thursday night and I have nothing better to do at that hour..

I definitely think there's a lot to taped programs and it's really fucked how WWE hasn't changed it. You can make the excuse for TNA that maybe they can't afford to do live shows every week, even though I think they could, but SD! and ECW there is no excuse. It's just horrible business on WWE's part.

They're smart, you'd think they would catch on. Maybe they just don't care.

K Jay

Will be interesting to see how recorded Raw rates this week.....

I had a sig, once.

The Half Boy

As to the TNA doing live shows thing: From my understanding of the situation, which is, I will happily admit, based solely on internet reports, TNA operates either at a loss, or so close to a loss that it makes no difference. At this point in time, I think Live shows are a commodity they just couldn't cope with.

I agree that internet reports can help lower the ratings, though. I used to watch Raw religiously, then I started using the internet, and I'd read the results, and lose all interest in watching the shows. They started showing Raw live a few years ago, but staying up that late just isn't an option for me. I'm not reduced to watching Wrestlemania, & the odd few PPV's that we get for free. I watch more TNA than I do WWE, because the wrestling channel is on my favourites on Sky.

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Danny Diamond

Founder/Admin

Jack Bauer moved to Monday Nights.


I also think taped shows KILLS anything they can really do to shock the wrestling audience.

People tuned in back then because of The Rock and Austin and stayed because of the cool tag division, Divas and everything else.

Even though it was the somewhat same formula there would be more turnover of the belts and you always wanted to see what would happen.

Remember when Raw was so stacked they would have to have 6-8 tag main events with guys like HHH, Rock, Angle, Kane, Undertaker and Austin all in the ring at the same time, but still had enough talent to give you a couple tag matches, diva matches, and maybe even a Hardcore, European and IC title all in one night.

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K Jay

Last night's 10/16 edition of WWE Monday Night Raw drew a final 3.7 cable rating with a 5 share. The first hour scored a 3.6 rating, while the second hour scored a 3.7 rating.

That is down from last week's 3.8 rating (the full three hours) and down from the 4.1 rating the last two hours scored from 9-11pm ET. On a side note, Monday Night Football did a huge 11.7 cable rating.

I had a sig, once.

mikedudelang

i think the biggest thing hurting wrestling is a lack of competition. when raw had to deal with nitro every monday, you knew both shows were out for blood. same with smackdown and thunder. now that vince basically owns the wrestling world, complacency has set in. it's sad because the wwe still has some great stars (mr. kennedy, booker t, undertaker, hhh, shawn michaels, john cena, etc.). they just don't seem to have the same quality of storytelling that they had back in their heyday. i think this has everything to do with the fact that the wwe no longer has any competition.