There was an interesting tweet recently by WWE’s Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer Michelle Wilson, noting that two-thirds of the viewers of “Total Divas” are new to the brand.
There’s probably something to that, given the audience makeup of “Total Divas” is completely different from every other show because it’s mostly comprised of women under 35 and teenage girls, audiences that have in the past had some affinity for pro wrestling at certain times, but as a general rule, not in large numbers.
The flip side is with that show garnering a new audience, that should, if anything, lead to increases in the other key products, Raw, Smackdown and arena business, which are not increasing at all, and in fact, so far this year, all three are in decline. But there is a change, particularly in Smackdown more than Raw, but it’s there in both, where the percentage of women viewers is increasing. What that indicates is that “Total Divas” is probably making some, not a lot of new female fans for the brand.
But that hides a huge problem that has gone almost completely overlooked. The core audience, the male viewership, has declined far greater than anyone has realized and more than a cursory look at ratings or arena attendance would indicate.
Nearly every long-time follower and people with long histories in the business that we’ve talked with of late has noted just from television and the reactions, combined with revenue that pro wrestling has become more-and-more a hardcore-based entertainment. It’s a smaller audience following wrestling than at any time, perhaps aside from the 1992-95 period when wrestling bottomed out, in the modern era.
The flip side is that audience is more into the product, because there is so much more too the product, because there is so much available. The few big events of the year are bigger than ever before, just because they are “big events” as opposed to in the past when big events were big events based on having the right attraction that clicks with the audience.
But the stuff that isn’t as big doesn’t matter as much. Because of the plethora of product, and also because that product, whether it be angles, storylines or match results, is less meaningful as far as repercussions, it’s harder to get a reaction.
But as far as the numbers watching the two key television shows, here’s the situation.
Smackdown is hard to judge because the numbers should have increased going to the more powerful network, and they did at first. But now they’re slightly below last year even with the network upgrade and the far better announcing. The thing with Smackdown is that the three hour exhaustion factor that hurts Raw at the end doesn’t play into effect as a two-hour show that is more wrestling oriented.
The issue with Smackdown is that it’s so much made into a “B” show (even, weirdly, they have by far the “A” announcing team because Lawler is revitalized and blows away JBL, and Ranallo is far and away the best announcer they’ve had in years). I thought with the move to USA, they’d try and equal it out more. But with Raw, while the women audience isn’t as hardcore (they tune out at a far faster rate than men, particularly for shows that drag), by percentage, they are holding steady while the overall audience is declining double digits. Thus, the actual decline in male viewership is stronger than anyone notices.
If there are also more women attending house shows, and given nobody knows if that’s the case or not, because overall attendance is down, that would also indicate the 16 percent drop in January and 8 percent drop in February would be even more within the male demo.
For example, the April 27, 2015 Raw did 2.6 million male viewers and 1.2 million female viewers. The April 28, 2014 Raw did 3.2 million male viewers and 1.4 million female viewers. But the April 25, 2016 Raw did 1,963,000 male viewers and 1,153,000 female viewers.
So you look and see a 32 percent drop over two years, and a 17 percent over one year and it does look bad.
But the male audience drop is actually 38 to 39 percent over two years and 24 to 25 percent over the past year.
The other aspect is when they tout so-called gains by percentages of women, that women are still down 18 percent over the past two years (although there is virtually no decline from last year) when it comes to Raw viewership, but the higher percentage of women viewers camouflages those declines because women, by percentage, are higher.
