So RAW scores a 2.7 because of Monday Night Football, and apparently everyone is panicking again. However, while I am normally not one to revel in the suffering of the WWE (what?), I think this is pretty karmic, considering the smug and misleading "Did You Know..." segment from a couple of weeks ago where they were bragging about beating a pre-season game as if this was something that happens all the time.
Get ready for more McMahons, I guess.
Scottford–
How dare you accuse St. Vincent of bullshitting the people you brute! Shame on you!
Do you think Vince will blow himself up while taking a paternity test and making out with Kelly Kelly next week?
I remember last year, the Raw after No Mercy did a 2.8, and everyone freaked (WWE is screwed, etc.).
Then, the very next week, Raw was back to 3.3, and that was the end of the freaking out.
The top selling items on WWE Shopzone tell you all you need to know about WWE these days. Who cares about ratings when you are raking in the dough from the little tweens buying Hardy merchandise. Seriously, ratings are not the life or death that they once were. As a public company, profit is the bottom line. Certain advertisers such as video game companies are gonna stick around knowing they get the demographics they crave. The days of Coke, Burger King, and other big companies are over for the most part. The money is in the merchandise, the ppvs, and the enormous back catalog of footage that creates DVDs are that are almost pure profit with little cost.
Comdukakis makes a great point. Why is WWE concerned with ratings these days? The only time they really mattered was the Monday Night Wars. Its not like getting an extra rating point will allow Vince to boost the cost for a 30 sec. advertisement.
It seems the powers that be (not “powers-TO-be” as many a WWE wrestler has said over the years. God, that irritates me) should be more focused on buy rates. That actually factors into the bottom line, and it’s a better tracker anyway, since you can compare ratings to buy rates to see what percentage of your audience you’re convincing to drop $40 a month.
I think the problem, with regards to the ratings being all that matters, is that the “Monday Night War” made the networks see wrestling as a viable cash cow which allowed them to overlook the whole “white trash” aspect of the business, in the name of making money.
As networks and times change as far as priorities and branding are concerned, ratings are the only protection wrestling and the WWE have to keep their product on tv, let alone on in a cushy timeslot like they currently have. Not to mention advertising dollars, since without big ratings, advertisers won’t want to associate their products with wrestling by letting ads be run during Raw.
As for buyrates, if running so many god-damn PPVs a year hasn’t klled the buyrates of WWE, then that’s not a problem WWE needs to worry about yet. The fact that it hasn’t is one of the biggest miracles yet of this decade, as far as the fact that WWE has utterly and completely devalued their entire PPV schedule with too many PPVs.
The good thing about the ppv schedule is that at least WWE appeared to realize their mistake, as they did cut back to 14 per year after a brief experimentation with 16. That leaves open the possibility that they will eventually cut it back to 12, where it had been from 1996 to 2005ish. I don’t really see them ever going back to less that 12, as that would require a complete new (old) type of booking that no one in the current regime has any experience with. (save Vince and Patterson, but I don’t know how much they are involved in the day-to-day stuff anymore)
Let’s wait until the Unforgiven buy rate comes in. If Dave Meltzer is right, we’re looking at the worst number since December to Dismember…
I definitely think there is at least a threshold where the ratings will definitely matter, and that is when the networks and advertisers start to balk. (as JesseBaker notes) For now and the foreseeable future, WWE is pretty safe. Raw is still a flagship show on USA and myNetworkTv is not about to punt on its recent investment so soon.
However, the trend over the past year has not been good: http://www.100megsfree4.com/wiawrestling/pages/wwf/wwfraw.htm. This link only provides ratings for Raw through June of 2008, but if you compare 2008 to 2007 as a whole, they are definitely on a slow downward spiral. I mean they are approaching 1997 territory here without a Nitro to kick Vince back in the ass.
Oh, and speaking of Vince, I agree with Scott. I think his neck “injury” is about to magically heal, and we’ll be seeing him on RAW very soon. Mike Adamle’s days are finally numbered. So wrestling fans have that going for them…which is nice.
“Get ready for more McMahons, I guess.”
For the love of God, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
That was a better than average football game. Seriously, if you started watching it, it was hard to change the channel. Exciting and an instant classic. Not trying to defend the WWE, but I thought I would switch over and really wanted to watch the cage match, but quickly forgot about it while watching that game. Most mondays the football is not that compelling
Exactly, I know that I was watching the game because I’m a huge Eagles fan (:sigh: the wrong team won…) and flipped back only during the CM Punk match. Did Raw ever BEAT Monday Night Football?
I think RAW beat MNF once or twice back during the heyday of wrestling during ‘98-’00. WWE, I don’t think, didn’t really publicize it (which is REALLY strange), but it did appear in an article in Sports Illustrated from ‘99 or so. I remember reading about “what’s wrong with Monday Night Football” when their ratings were down and the NFL was freaking out. One of the facts they gave was that RAW on cable had more viewers for a few weeks than football did. This was around the time Disney made the decision to move MNF from ABC to ESPN.
I don’t think that’s right. Monday Night Football moved to ABC before the start of the 2006 season, which is well after Raw’s peak during the Attitude era. And MNF’s lowest rating ever was a 6.9 just last year (obviously it would be during the ESPN years). I can’t imagine the highest rated episode of Raw (I believe it was a 7.1, right?) coming anywhere close to an NFL game on network television. I believe you were blowin’ some smoke there.
Oops, in the second sentence I meant MNF moved to ESPN in 2006, not ABC. Sorry.
MP, to clear it up, the highest rated Raw ever was the 5/10/99 episode which did an 8.1 with the 11:00 p.m. overrun doing a 9.2.
Case in point about ratings not mattering. The CW let Smackdown go, despite being the highest rated program on the network since day one.