yeah i fucked up, fixed the post
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WWE Raw drops to lowest TV rating in 18 years
- Thread starter RBH
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yeah i fucked up, fixed the post
Rafa=FedKilla
Banned
I remember I thought I'd die if I missed a Sunday night Heat.
You weren't a real fan if you skipped Shotgun Saturday Night.
UberTag
Member
Everything he says here is completely correct. The only point I'll comment on is his stress of continuity and that's simply impossible because McMahon forgets things week-to-week or McMahon changes his mind week-to-week. He'll actively sabotage continuity which is why we have the New Day laying out 4 guys on RAW's main event one week and zero followup or build the next week.
Also, his staff of soap opera reject writers aren't equipped to write multiple stand-alone segments each week because they simply don't know how and they refuse to trust the talent to develop those segments themselves. When they do write something, it turns into something horrendous like most of the "Divas Revolution" segments.
Where else are you going to see the finish of a match wind up as a tombstone piledriver on an escalator. Certainly not on "every RAW looks and feels the same so who cares".
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
From my understanding, WCW was killed by the AOL Time Warner merger and not by Ted Turner.
Ratings from WCW in that period got the same ratings the WWE is doing now.
Still more interesting than anything that happened on Raw this week. At least that was kind of memorable. I would have got the same thing out of watching 3 hours of TV static as I did watching Raw.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Watching a wrestling promotion implode live on TV is definitely more entertaining than Raw but it's not the kind of thing you can do weekly, which is why there was no Bash at the Beach 2001.
That was a worked shoot, it just didn't materialize due to external factors.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
hogan and bischoff didnt think so
how time flies...
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
You can't take either of them by their word. Hogan is ALWAYS working. He lies to fans all the time pretending to be shooting.
Smokey_Run
Member
If attendance and ratings continue to drop, it seems like they will be faced with making actual changes to the brand. I think some of the suggestions in the Russo video posted just a bit ago are quick and easy fixes that would instantly improve things. Instead of bringing back old talent in front of the camera, it sounds like it's desperately needed behind the camera.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
You can't take Russo at his word either.
Given that Hogan sued WCW in real life and never appeared on TV again I'm going to say shoot.
i got back into wrestling for a while thanks to shotgun saturday night. stopped watching regularly a little before eddy guerrero died.
Frustrated_Grunt
Member
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
WCW and TNA under him didn't exactly get great reviews or ratings, and there are plenty examples of Russo making extremely dumb decisions, but at this point I would take those over what we have now.
Ideally they would find a happy balance between keeping the good wrestling they have now, while finding more ways to hold attention and building new superstars.
If you can leash him and not feed his ego I think you can accomplish some great things. They should hire him and Cornette back. Have them at eachothers throats again. Good things seemed to happen last time they did that. Fire all the writers too, too many cooks.
Bluekaveli
Member
Damn, I could've listen to that fpr an hour, that's really good. Give this goof another chance. Hell just get Paul in the room with those guys.
Shotgun was my shit
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Why would you? You used to be able to make a good living wrestling for WWF, WCW, or one of the territories. Now you can only do it wrestling for WWE or being one of the very top indy guys. Everyone else either does it because they like wrestling and have a day job or they are trying to get to that position. Getting into a business where only a few dozen people can make a living isn't good odds for anyone.
are most of the old school wrestling schools closed? the wwe's situation reminds me of boxing these days. a lot of the boxing gyms have closed and the talent pool is dwindling. it's probably even worse for wrestling.
They could always just hire some bodybuilders to wrestle. No biggie.
Bluekaveli
Member
The moment he said JJ you knew it was fake. JJ drew as much as I do now(I just doodle when I get the chance.).
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
They should just go all in on converting Crossfitters to wrestlers. Don't care for bulky ass traditional bodybuilders trying to do actual athletic moves.
WWE 2 month schedule
-Singles Feud starts with match or beatdown of the good guy
-DQ Finish match
-Tag match with the guys from the Singles feud getting teamed up with guys from a separate feud
-Bad guy interrupting a separate match the good guy is having
[REPEAT 1 of these options for Smackdown every week]
PPV Payoff, oh wait no the heel cheated/or REALLY hates the face this time
[REPEAT 1st part in different order]
PPV Payoff, at which the fans only reaction is I'm glad it's over
How can you expect the old ways of working the same guys together for months on end to work when so much of it is televised?
It's like there is a booking board and you just have to rotate the pieces, with nothing that happens being memorable. 15 years from now will today's 10 year olds remember New Day vs The Dudleys? At what point are we gonna see something that makes this as memorable as Edge and Christian vs The Dudleys, or The Hardys vs The Dudleys. This feud specifically is so disappointing because they seem to have all the parts to do something memorable, but nothing has come out so far. There has to be thousands of things Kofi himself could dream up to do with a ladder or table involving The Dudleys.
-Singles Feud starts with match or beatdown of the good guy
-DQ Finish match
-Tag match with the guys from the Singles feud getting teamed up with guys from a separate feud
-Bad guy interrupting a separate match the good guy is having
[REPEAT 1 of these options for Smackdown every week]
PPV Payoff, oh wait no the heel cheated/or REALLY hates the face this time
[REPEAT 1st part in different order]
PPV Payoff, at which the fans only reaction is I'm glad it's over
How can you expect the old ways of working the same guys together for months on end to work when so much of it is televised?
It's like there is a booking board and you just have to rotate the pieces, with nothing that happens being memorable. 15 years from now will today's 10 year olds remember New Day vs The Dudleys? At what point are we gonna see something that makes this as memorable as Edge and Christian vs The Dudleys, or The Hardys vs The Dudleys. This feud specifically is so disappointing because they seem to have all the parts to do something memorable, but nothing has come out so far. There has to be thousands of things Kofi himself could dream up to do with a ladder or table involving The Dudleys.
WhateverItTakes
Banned
Aw man caught a live ICW show tonight. I am sports entertained.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
The wrestling schools that exist nowadays are better than the old school ones, which would either scam you or beat the shit out of you.
Demoskinos
Member
WWE is way to large to fade away now. The brand has way to much potential value even if the McMahons lose control some media conglomerate will step in and fund it.
Ninja Scooter
Member
NXT would be a ratings failure if they tried putting it on USA.
I mean if the guy who plays Arrow can do it, anyone can.
I doubt anyone would want to touch it aside from maybe Disney to make The Chaperone 2.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Vince Russo legit loved Jeff Jarrett and tried to make him the face of the company though.
I wouldn't say hire Russo for creative, but someone needs to keep structure in place. Basically they shouldn't be having matches go over commercial break, stop repeating matches (match on smackdown, same match next monday, a match on the PPV, a rematch the next night after for free), do something with continuity, stop giving people scripted promos that they must say word for word, etc. VKM puts a hell of a lot of responsibility on himself to oversee every possible thing in this regard and it's a detriment to the product.
Mechanized
Member
Honestly a wcw 2000s car crash would be more entertaining than the current product. The business is over, everything is exposed. They might as well go fucking nuts.
Paracelsus
Member
I like how over half the things Russo addressed are in the infamous Cabana podcast episode with Punk. "WWE has no long term for anyone, Vince gets into the room and goes "what's next for Cena?"", he also made the example about himself going from main eventing Summerslam to a dark match with R-Truth. Same for the writing, "there's 26 f*ing writers".
The main problem and the one that never gets addressed is that Vince and Dunn get bored of someone faster than the audience (Sandow) and they will totally pull the plug if they don't think it works, so the booking is horrendous, you can't build a new Austin or Rock or even a Cena if there's no consistency. I can't take someone seriously if he goes from losing for six months to beat everybody. Bryan's main event run was made of losses, but they were totally writing another Mankind underdog story there. Even someone like Punk, with the longest WWE championship reign of recent times and super over was starting to crumble and die due to the half assed midcard booking he was getting.
For example, a thing I will never really digest until the last day wrestling exists is how badly they book the belts. Before, once someone won the WWE title he was never going back, unless it was a one-time deal for writing emphasis (Kane wins tag and IC before No Mercy, to make it look like he can beat HHH, HHH wins IC from Hardy to give all the gold to the two men power trip), with the exception of Jericho, whose reign was as transitional as it can be. Owens can't take the US title from Cena, but he can take the IC which is supposedly a bigger deal.
The main problem and the one that never gets addressed is that Vince and Dunn get bored of someone faster than the audience (Sandow) and they will totally pull the plug if they don't think it works, so the booking is horrendous, you can't build a new Austin or Rock or even a Cena if there's no consistency. I can't take someone seriously if he goes from losing for six months to beat everybody. Bryan's main event run was made of losses, but they were totally writing another Mankind underdog story there. Even someone like Punk, with the longest WWE championship reign of recent times and super over was starting to crumble and die due to the half assed midcard booking he was getting.
For example, a thing I will never really digest until the last day wrestling exists is how badly they book the belts. Before, once someone won the WWE title he was never going back, unless it was a one-time deal for writing emphasis (Kane wins tag and IC before No Mercy, to make it look like he can beat HHH, HHH wins IC from Hardy to give all the gold to the two men power trip), with the exception of Jericho, whose reign was as transitional as it can be. Owens can't take the US title from Cena, but he can take the IC which is supposedly a bigger deal.
Professor Beef
Banned
Times have changed and there's more wrestling out there than ever before. Partly because of that fact, you can't really do long-term booking anymore without people getting bored and wondering when the conclusion is. The result of that is things changing quicker than they should. It's not ideal in the slightest, but that's just how things are now. You really think they can get away with a storyline that spans at least half a year without people complaining anymore? Just look at CM Punk's reign for a prime example.
And before someone says "well nxt does ____"; nxt is once a week, with a
Hypothetical question.
If you had 100M in the bank.
And the WWE were to go out of business. Popping 1.0 ratings. Attendance at an all time low. Lost their USA deal. Stocks plummeting. Would you buy it for 25M? You get their entire video library and a few contracts and probably have to sink another 25-50M to make it profitable and get a new TV deal.
If you had 100M in the bank.
And the WWE were to go out of business. Popping 1.0 ratings. Attendance at an all time low. Lost their USA deal. Stocks plummeting. Would you buy it for 25M? You get their entire video library and a few contracts and probably have to sink another 25-50M to make it profitable and get a new TV deal.
Professor Beef
Banned
Sure, why not
UberTag
Member
The trick is that you do long-term booking with your main event talent, limiting their appearances and preventing over-exposure. Essentially you treat ALL of those guys like Brock on TV... instead of just treating Brock that way. Having Rollins go out there and get humiliated every week... or any heel champ for that matter... is just ridiculous.
Still have that talent appear on house shows to keep those gates high but their TV exposure needs to be kept limited. Bring your main event talent out to pop a rating when needed instead of the nostalgia acts.
Do short-term booking with your mid-card... and give EVERYONE something to do and a story to build from instead of just squandering talent only to bring them out to get squashed or appear as part of a lumberjack match posse.
djblackice
Member
I'm not greedy.
As long as I've got my health and my millions of dollars and my gold house and my rocket car - I don't need anything else.
Nah. Not gonna throw away 3/4 of my fortune just to try and revive a dead brand.
Paracelsus
Member
That's not what I was getting at. Take Owens: you knew from the day he started that he may be winning a fight or two, he would be losing the war. Why? He was against Hulk Hogan. They did the same crap with Rusev and Wyatt before him, made them look like "oh, maybe it can happen" and it never happens so you become immune and numbed and jaded. Owens had to win, take the title, trash talk and move on, have some other lamb take the blame and screw Cena during yet another rematch so Cena can move on (like Michaels vs Undertaker during 97, Kane injected into the feud to remove Undertaker from the main event) without getting comeuppance. Maybe use Stroman to wreck his bones, so you can go back to the Wyatt angle as in "did you think I was through with you?" and so on. Even fricking Carlito debut angle with Cena was better written than this, albeit Carlito's career was over a year afterwards.
Punk? The ruined Summer of Punk is the result of borderline short term schizophrenic booking. Hey, we have -due proportions aside- Austin level of buzz here, let's use it to make the guy into the ultimate antihero— no wait we have to strip him of the title because mexicans won't watch the live events if ADR is not the champion but then who we book him with oh there's HHH who's fuming to bury his ass oh and there's Big Sexy (who is responsible for the worst segments of the second half of 2011 with or without Punk, exception made for "OMG Kevin Nash thought he was dead LOL"). Austin's waged war to Vince in September of 97, it was a very slow burner and it ended in July of 99, despite The Rock being there, and SCSA's angle was kayfabe. Punk had legit beef with the owner of the company and it all lasted a month. They tried building John Laringitis as the other Vince but again, lame garbage angle.
They really need to cut down on their programming. Raw to two hours (They actually prefer that, it's USA that wants it at 3) and Smackdown to one hour (imo).
As it is there's waaaaay too much goddamn wrestling on per week. If you actually try to watch all content every week you're going to burn out. Let NXT pick up where slam/velocity/whateverthefuck was doing for an hour a week; not only will it be something different to watch, live events won't be a marathon to be at and wear out the crowd either when they tape so much stuff at once.
Imagine someone trying to watch this era years from now on the Network or wherever, it's going to be physically and mentally impossible
As it is there's waaaaay too much goddamn wrestling on per week. If you actually try to watch all content every week you're going to burn out. Let NXT pick up where slam/velocity/whateverthefuck was doing for an hour a week; not only will it be something different to watch, live events won't be a marathon to be at and wear out the crowd either when they tape so much stuff at once.
Imagine someone trying to watch this era years from now on the Network or wherever, it's going to be physically and mentally impossible
Terrible comparison, ratings like that back then were terrible, now it's just kind of crappy.
That segment is way better than anything wwe has done the past few years.
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