WWE News: WWE Doesn’t Understand Why They’re Losing Viewers, Finally Asks Fans For Help, Internet Explodes
It should come as no surprise that WWE is losing ratings. The company needs massive help from a programming and creative perspective. They have the best roster from top to bottom in the world, even with major injuries. However, they somehow cannot seem to make things work. Ratings have not only slipped, they have slipped badly. WWE is down 25 percent from just this past summer alone.
People love to use the excuse that football is causing WWE shows to go down in ratings. While this is a reason some of the time, the audience has never reached this low. The sad part is that this is not so much on the talent, but how they are being used. The opening segment this past week to WWE RAW was brutal.
The New Day are the best act the WWE has according to most fans. They were in three different segments last night. The beginning, middle, and end. They started the show, had a backstage thing, and did commentary for a bit. Only then the WWE chose to end the show with the WWE’s newest faction, the League of Nations. WWE is listening by using them, as fans do love the trio. However, just like with anything, they can wear out their welcome very quickly if used too much.
WWE doesn’t seem to ever grasp this. This was the very reason people began to hate John Cena. He was great early on, only for WWE to overexpose him and have him win… all the time. Constantly. Every match.
WWE is now using this same storyline with the sympathy story of Daniel Bryan to build Roman Reigns. Fans aren’t stupid. WWE seems to think this for some reason, as they recycle stories and pass them off as if they are something revolutionary.
WWE is at least trying to finally listen to fans now. According to PWInsider, WWE sent out an interesting email. This is what the news bite claimed:
“WWE sent out an email blast to its WWE Fan Council yesterday, asking them to take a survey concerning the state of Raw. The email asked when a viewer actually watches the show, when they change the channel and other questions. The company was curious if the respondent would change the channel during talking segments, backstage bits, recaps, ect. Raw has lost approximately [25 percent] of it’s viewership since July.”
Fans have simply chosen to stop watching now. WWE always said that if they were doing something wrong, they would know because people wouldn’t watch. Now they aren’t watching as often. So clearly someone is doing something wrong, and it’s not the fans. Once this news began to get out a bit, the internet went absolutely crazy with what they felt WWE could do.
In fact, WWE is now opening a position for a full-time media monitor. This is a position that will follow people on the internet to find out what media of all kinds are saying about WWE. From there, they will report their findings to WWE. This is clearly in response to WWE wanting to get feedback from fans as well as those covering them on a daily basis. If they get a lot of a certain something, clearly they will consider adding it to their programming one would imagine. With that said, if you feel someone like – say, Dean Ambrose – deserves more. You might want to make it well known by commenting it everywhere you can. They’re bound to see it.
On top of this, there are rumors that WWE might be scrapping most of their planned WrestleMania this year in an effort to start fresh with new stories in place. This could be a huge help for them right before The Royal Rumble, as they can get feedback now and begin to build people toward WrestleMania through the Rumble PPV and more.
Some of the internet comments have been interesting, such as these from Facebook via the Wrestling News Hub page…..
Scott Rednour: “20 mins of actual wrestling in a 3 hr show, they cram the same regurgitated crap down ur throat week in an week out never giving the mid carders any time, once sandow got “over” w/ the crowd they pull him off tv 4 good, this supposed divas revolution is a joke, no awesome kong, no beautiful people, no revolution. cant have a revolution w/ 8 women!! JOKE!! as soon as the bellas come on im out!! LAME!! bring back some cruiserweights and luchadores and make it exciting again, neville is a good start but he needs others 2 match his quick,hi flying style, not getting beat up by ko, barret an the rest every week. the announcers blow chunks except lawler. and commercial breaks every 10 frkn mins is just ridiculous an that’s just 4 starters.”
Jeremy Yanez: “Can’t stand new day or Wyatt’s promo’s or matches to predictable and there trying to build more stables and to me that’s a waste of TV time stop trying to make it what corporate wants to listen to us fans in my opinion less talking and more actions start having a title scramble I’m sick of the wwe forcing me stars that is a joke give me someone who loves the business n not just doing it for the money like Owens can’t stand him big head for what beating cena 1st night n lost the next two matches against him wwe is to predictable no matter who won the title at last ppv sheamus was gonna cash in yawn I’d rather seen it stay vacated what was the point of the tournament if that was the plan should have just handed it to him UK its bad when everybody is saying the same thing.”
Mario Rodriguez: “Getting to predictable and any actual surprise is spoiled right away they need to find an actual way to get things from getting out to the public.”
Lauren Rae: The angles are very hot and cold and there’s a lack of consistency. I mean, when shit’s on, it’s on fire. But when it’s cold, it gets ice cold. The Lana/Rusev angle had potential had they not immediately put Lana with Ziggler with a romantic twist. He could have just came in to defend her as a friend and let it develop naturally. They made Rusev look sympathetic and not the brute he needed to be. Ambrose has been reduced to the cheerleader role for Roman more often than not, and it’s degrading because we all know he’s capable of more than that.
When he and Roman are all bromance and in tag matches, on equal footing, it’s awesome. You can see they’re clearing BFF’s outside the ring. Outside of that, it’s pointless. And the Diva’s Revolution was botched from the start. All three teams need to be split already. How does the company expect the girls to get over in their designated roles if they’re not allowed to actually define themselves individually?
What really kills me is that Lita is a road agent now, said she’s on creative. And they have Jimmy Jacobs as a writer. Road Dogg is starting to get into writing, he’s mentioned in Kult of Kayfabe that he’s sat in on meetings and chimed in with ideas, he’s part of the collaborative effort. Given their history in the ring and the fact that they have more experience in wrestling than probably most of the creative team combined, we should clearly be seeing an upswing in storylines but everything is diving.”
This doesn’t even include the thousands of other comments from Facebook pages as well as Twitter accounts. You certainly don’t want to see what Reddit had to say. Heck, even MySpace is making a comeback to talk about this. The internet is seemingly trying to help WWE here. With recent ratings, can they really afford to not pay attention? What makes things even more interesting is that USA Network, the home of WWE RAW, never asked for the company to go PG and has said they wouldn’t mind edgier programming like most of their other shows. Food for thought.
[Image via WWE]
