The Ratings thread

Rjd2

Stereomaniac wrote: »

What I think a lot of people seem to forget is that at the end of the day, we're grown men watching a television programme that's aimed at children. The product isn't always going to have things that we think are great because we aren't the target audience like we once were. The best way to protest against this is by turning off the television and cancelling the network subscriptions. Somehow I don't think many of us are going to be doing that though.

Plenty of people have turned off their televisions though, that is why Vince is not a happy man.

Oh and yeah the product while still children friendly, it still relies a lot on us adults.

25 percent are under the age of 18.

from the official wwe site.

so what about the other 75 per cent?

Lithium93_

I uh don't remember starting this thread :pac:

Bounty Hunter

You were totally wasted when it happened but don't worry about it these things happen on your birthday :pac:

Alexis Sanchez

Stereomaniac wrote: »

I think 3 hour shows are well and truly here to stay. It seems like that's what people blame the poor product on over and over. Well they put on 3 hour pay per views every month that consistently impress me as a viewer and many others as well I'm sure.

Raw and PPVs are not comparable.

Raw is stacked with mid-card matches, promos and in-ring segments that are used to build towards the big PPV matches.

PPVs are stacked with big matches, usually for a championship, and the part-time wrestlers almost only wrestle on PPVs.

The 3 hours are definitely a major reason why the ratings are down. They don't have enough ideas to fill up 3 hours with good television, so promos and in-ring segments are stretched out to waste time and are poorly put together. Having 20+ writers doesn't help matters. As the old saying goes: too many cooks spoil the broth.

3 hours once a month on a Sunday is fine, 3 hours every Monday is too much.

ERG89

Alexis Sanchez wrote: »

Raw and PPVs are not comparable.

Raw is stacked with mid-card matches, promos and in-ring segments that are used to build towards the big PPV matches.

PPVs are stacked with big matches, usually for a championship, and the part-time wrestlers almost only wrestle on PPVs.

The 3 hours are definitely a major reason why the ratings are down.
3 hours once a month on a Sunday is fine, 3 hours every Monday is too much.

Find Raw filled with rematches from the PPV's making them kinda redundant

Mick Murdock

Is there a way to move back to 2 hours without it reflecting badly on the quality of the show?

They could maybe do it in conjunction with Smackdown moving to USA so there's now four hours on one network.

Has WWE's product ever been really good and the ratings poor? The cyclical thing is an excuse for poor writing, lack of stars etc.

I think it's Wade Keller who is always banging on about them making the brand the attraction and I think he's right. Nobody watches sports for the sake of it. They watch because they care who succeeds and who doesn't

I'm amazed they still have in around 2 million watching Smackdown every week!

riffmongous

Even here the amount of interest in the WWE product seems to have dropped dramatically, the live RAW thread is often empty and Smackdown results sometimes dont even get posted any more. I think WWE trying to explain away the drop could be very dangerous for the future

DM_7

I think WWE have booked the show badly in the lead up to and since Mania. Things like Bryan getting hurt don't help either.

Yes Cena was great, Owens fresh, New Day amazing.

But overall the weakly booked Champion, the waste of Brock, Kane and Big Show, endless Orton v Sheamus, Ziggler v Rusev w/Lana, divas revolution, the feuds that generally go on forever make RAW and Smackdown completely skippable.

Little that happens feels like it has any real consequence.

Monokne

An File wrote: »

Sorry to be pedantic, but 700k out of 4.1 million is not 25%. It's closer to 17%.

Bryan Alvarez on the Observer site keeps quoting this 25% figure. I looked up the numbers to see. For some reason I was thinking that 750k was a quarter of 3 million so 700k was close enough. But of course the original figure was 4.1, not 3.1. DUH! Thanks for pointing that out bro.:)

Monokne

Rjd2 wrote: »

Plenty of people have turned off their televisions though, that is why Vince is not a happy man.

Oh and yeah the product while still children friendly, it still relies a lot on us adults.

25 percent are under the age of 18.

from the official wwe site.

so what about the other 75 per cent?

That's the WWE party line which they use to make themselves more attractive to sponsors who want to advertise to kids, but the real number is about 19%. Granted they do aim the show at kids to an extent, but on the last conference call Vince himself said they want to appeal to all 4 age demographics.

Incidentally, when the product was aimed at adults, in the late 90's, 40% of the audience was under 18. Kids don't want to watch something they know is aimed at kids once they get past 13, 14.

The average Raw viewer is 41. So we can't really give them a pass for presenting a poor product. NXT is TV PG too, but I don't feel like an idiot watching that like I do when I watch Raw.

Chain Smoker

Monokne wrote: »

The key is where cable TV is when the deal is due. If, as may well be the case, more and more non-live programming is being consumed on demand while Raw is one of a dwindling number of TV shows that can still pull in 2.5 million viewers+ each week, they will be in a much stronger position. If ratings across the board stop declining and Raw continues to tank, maybe they will be in trouble.

Anyway you slice it, declining popularity is bad but when you are looking at TV income, it's a fluid situation.

I like the way you think!

Was going to go into this stuff too, but I felt like I was drifting into a gigantic post attempting to make too many points. You're completely right though and it's kind of a scary thing, they could put out a thoroughly **** product for the next few years and wind up getting an amazing deal just because USA or whoever else are desperate.

Really, with Smackdown moving to a much bigger network in the new year, WWE should be most focused on finding a way to ensure Smackdown is viewed as a different enough venture to warrant tuning into. Instead they're gonna throw a load of stuff at it at the start and then quickly forget all about it again.

beakerjoe

WWEs youtube viewers have risen.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/28/wwe-top-youtube-charts-little-baby-bum

Stereomaniac

Alexis Sanchez wrote: »

Raw and PPVs are not comparable.

Raw is stacked with mid-card matches, promos and in-ring segments that are used to build towards the big PPV matches.

PPVs are stacked with big matches, usually for a championship, and the part-time wrestlers almost only wrestle on PPVs.

The 3 hours are definitely a major reason why the ratings are down. They don't have enough ideas to fill up 3 hours with good television, so promos and in-ring segments are stretched out to waste time and are poorly put together. Having 20+ writers doesn't help matters. As the old saying goes: too many cooks spoil the broth.

3 hours once a month on a Sunday is fine, 3 hours every Monday is too much.

I've no strong opinion on this really like some do here, but thanks....

Chain Smoker

Lower rating again this week but only by but only by a teeny tiny amount from last week so it's possible they're hitting as low as they can go for now, .5 down from the same week a year ago though. With Show and Kane in major roles and a main event of Bray vs Reigns, what would you expect. I expect Brock and Taker to be involved a lot from up to the PPV but they're f*cked after that.

Stereomaniac

I know I said I didn't care about the ratings, but I'm not surprised they were bad on Monday!

Alexis Sanchez

A new low for 2015:

November 2, 2015
Hour one – 3,375,000 viewers
Hour two – 3,180.000 viewers
Hour three – 3,189,000 viewers
Average – 3,248,000 viewers

A bit of context: http://www.wrestlingnewsworld.com/raw-audience-down-again-2/

Still waiting for what the Nielsen ratings are like to see how it compares to Raws from 1996/97.

Frank O. Pinion

The numbers are low, but they're still in the top 10 rated shows for cable.

Show/Network/Time/Total Viewers/18-49 rating:

1. MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL ESPN 8:15PM 12.404 4.6
2. SPORTSCENTER ESPN 12:26 AM 3.410 1.6
3. LOVE & HIP HOP HLLYWD 2 VH1 8:00 PM 2.603 1.4
4. WWE ENTERTAINMENT USA 10:00 PM 3.189 1.1
5. WWE ENTERTAINMENT USA 8:00 PM 3.375 1.1
6. WWE ENTERTAINMENT USA 9:00 PM 3.180 1.1
7. BLACK INK CREW CHICAGO VH1 9:00 PM 1.898 1.0
8. NFL PRIMETIME ESPN 1:26 AM 1.887 1.0
9. MONDAY NIGHT COUNTDOWN L ESPN 6:00 PM 2.116 0.8
10. STREET OUTLAWS DISC 9:00 PM 1.968 0.8

beakerjoe

TV viewership is declining in everything except live sports, WWE isnt declining as fast as other shows.

Bounty Hunter

One thing I wonder is what WWEs plan is considering the way things are going with declining TV numbers. The network is great and all but its existing WWE viewers that are converted into network subscribers and they need the TV platform to attract new viewers which can later become network subscribers.

I don't expect ratings to go up (although TV in the traditional sense won't go away either) but there has to be some long term plan to be able to attract new viewers

A Primal Nut

I'd like to see them go with 2 hours of raw plus the NXT show as the third hour. Ratings might not be hurt overall as much as you think and even if revenue goes down so will costs.

beakerjoe

A Primal Nut wrote: »

I'd like to see them go with 2 hours of raw plus the NXT show as the third hour. Ratings might not be hurt overall as much as you think and even if revenue goes down so will costs.

Costs wont go down as dramticly as revenue sadly, the TV money is the reason it will stay at 3 hours for the foreseeable.

The last 2 Raw flew by for me, best Raws in a while. Still far from perfect shows, but they didnt feel like a chore when viewing.

beakerjoe

Bounty Hunter wrote: »

One thing I wonder is what WWEs plan is considering the way things are going with declining TV numbers. The network is great and all but its existing WWE viewers that are converted into network subscribers and they need the TV platform to attract new viewers which can later become network subscribers.

I don't expect ratings to go up (although TV in the traditional sense won't go away either) but there has to be some long term plan to be able to attract new viewers

Raw should be that platform. Without Raw they will slowly decline.

The business model for wrestling needs changing but I dont think anyone really knows how to truly change the game for the better yet. Raw is the shoop window for the Network currently and without that it The Network subs wont grow.

Alexis Sanchez

Yet another new low:

This week’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw for Manchester, England garnered an average viewing audience of 3,173,333 viewers on the USA Network. That’s down an average of (-74,667 viewers) from the week prior. Below is how the show did each hour:

Hour one – 3,480,000 viewers
Hour two – 3,177.000 viewers
Hour three – 2,863,000 viewers
Average – 3,173,333 viewers

WWE doesn’t usually pay much attention to the numbers of the taped shows but man, that third hour is weak. Monday Night Football over on ESPN did 11,438,000 viewers.

http://www.wrestlingnewsworld.com/raw-audience-down-more-with-ugly-3rd-hour/

Frank O. Pinion

Down again, but still the 4th highest rated show on all US cable...

Alexis Sanchez

Good news, for once. Not for me, though, I rather see the ratings decline until their sponsors and NBC Universal complain, then, hopefully, the WWE will discontinue these 3-hour Raws.

WWE RAW sees highest rating in 3 weeks

The quarterfinals of the WWE title tournament led to an audience rise this week, up to 3.28 million viewers, up from 3.16 million last week and 3.24 million the week before.

The Houston Texans upset of the Cincinnati Bengals going head-to-head did 12.19 million viewers, so Raw did a better number than last week against a more viewed football game.

The pattern remained consistent with the first hour doing well, with the first half hour not against football doing the strongest, and the audience fading in the second and third hours, but not fading at the level of last week.

The third hour was built around Roman Reigns vs. Cesaro and the controversial Paige-Charlotte contract signing.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.54 million viewers

9 p.m. 3.29 million viewers

10 p.m. 3.05 million viewers

Alexis Sanchez

Bad news for the Seamus era:

There is no way to spin the Monday, 11/23 WWE Raw ratings other than that they were a disaster.

The show did 2.95 million viewers, more than 200,000 viewers lower than what had previously been the non-holiday low dating back to 1997 when Raw was losing badly to WCW Monday Nitro.

Part of the reason was the NFL's Monday night game featuring the New England Patriots vs. Buffalo Bills that did 14.26 million viewers, which is about two million more than football has been doing in recent weeks but nowhere near a record.

It is the first time Raw averaged less than three million viewers since 1997.

To make matters worse, this was the day after the Survivor Series event where the WWE heavyweight title changed hands, which usually would lead to at least a strong first hour. In case you needed to be reminded, Sheamus now holds the gold after cashing in his MITB briefcase against five minute champion Roman Reigns.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.19 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.99 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.71 million viewers

Moneymaker

Good. They are getting exactly what they deserve.

sky88

Moneymaker wrote: »

Good. They are getting exactly what they deserve.

i dont think this is due to sheamus i think it would be similar rating would be there if reigns had of won.

This is what bad booking and handling of talent that people want to see is to blame.

The causal fans will alwys go up and down on figures but i think the problem now is there losing the hardcore fans due to the bad booking.

Bounty Hunter

There was nothing on SS or Raw to make me want to watch the next show (or to want to continue to watch that Raw). That's the problem and the reason that the ratings might just continue to get worse.

I am someone who will probably watch no matter how bad it gets and I've been questioning if I should bother the past few shows its been that meh

the groutch

not looking good, the way things are going people won't even care enough to come back on January 4th when the "Road To WM" begins.