Normally I’ve set a rule that I’ll wait a year before I address any angles in this column. This time, however, I’m making an exception.
Be glad. The alternative was a column on Mark Madden.
Great-ing Gimmicks of the Present: The WWE Million Dollar Giveaway – WWE, 2008
So Vince McMahon is making headlines by giving away a million dollars. And all you have to do is watch Raw. Let’s take a look and see what this really means.
First up, this is not the first time this has been done. At the 1997 Summerslam, the WWF had promised to give away a million dollars. They called two lucky viewers to try their luck. The catch was that they had a board with thirty locks on it. Each viewer got one key and if the key unlocked the lock they won the money. Needless to say, neither person won.
So why is Vince doing this? It’s a stunt to boost the ratings. It’s desperation. For the last few years, all TV ratings (not just Raw’s) have been dropping lower and lower. The Memorial Day Raw drew a 2.9 rating. Compare that to Nitro. When WCW was completely collapsing in 2001, the final Nitro did a 3.0. To be fair, that rating did get a boost as the previous weeks had seen the show only doing a 2.1.
Raw, opposite Nitro, was averaging in the high 4’s. To explain this, ratings are done as an estimated percentage of the number of people viewing a show. In 2001, that means the estimate is that nearly five percent of everyone watching television from 9 to 11 pm was watching Raw. Today that number has dropped nearly two full percentage points.
So why the concern? Raw’s ratings are normally stable in the 3.0-3.9 range, and they hit a 4 once this year. Plus, Memorial Day traditionally sees Raw take a hit in the ratings.
The fact is that during this same time period last year, Raw had fifteen weeks that did a 4 or better. Granted, during that time they also had two weeks that only drew a 3.0. 2006 saw 18 weeks with a 4 or better with the lowest rating a 3.3. 2005’s ratings were softer with 9 weeks hitting a 4 and with a lowest rating of 3.4. However, 2005 also saw a channel change back to USA in March, which should have seen the ratings rise due to USA’s wider market. They did not.
What does this mean? People aren’t watching wrestling, or at least not as much. It’s as simple as that. When the numbers fall, they do it because people aren’t watching your shows.
What can some of the problems be? First, there is a glut of wrestling on TV right now that compares to the Monday Night War. Back then, WCW had a three hour Nitro, two hours of Thunder, and an hour each of Worldwide and Saturday Night. That’s a total of seven hours of WCW programming every week, plus a three hour PPV every month.
WWE is currently running two hours of Raw, two hours of Smackdown, one hour of ECW, and an hour of AM Raw. Until recently you could have also added an hour of Heat to the total which would give seven hours of WWE programming a week, plus fourteen PPVs a year. Consider the fact for a second that until Heat was cancelled that the WWE actually had more programs running than WCW did at its peak. (Although Heat had become internet-only, it still provided different matches. Also, AM Raw may recap Raw, but Worldwide and Saturday Night also provided recaps for the week’s shows).
During 1999-2000 (when WCW was peaking), as stated above, WCW had seven hours of programming plus a PPV every month. The WWF had two hours of Raw, two hours of Smackdown, an hour of Heat, and an hour of Jakked for six hours plus a PPV every month. You also had ECW with an hour show on TNN, an hour of Hardcore TV, and a PPV every other month. Technically you had 66 to 69 hours of wrestling a month depending on whether ECW had a PPV or not.
Today you have seven hours of WWE programming plus one or two PPVs. TNA runs two hours of Impact and an hour of Xplosion weekly plus a PPV every month. Ring of Honor is running a two-hour PPV every other month. That is a total of 42-47 hours a month.
Something else to consider is all of the smaller shows. If you have Dish Network you can add an hour weekly of NWA Showcase to that (or the show is also available online). Also available online is TNA Today – a show that can run from 5 to 15 minutes five days a week. If you get America One you can see the HWA’s Adrenaline, a weekly sixty-minute show. That’s not including all the other non match-related shows available online such as WWE’s Dirt Sheet or Santino’s Casa or TNA’s Spin Cycle. Plus there are matches upon matches available online. We also have access to more classic footage via WWE 24/7.
The end result is this – odds are that any night you turn on the television there will be wrestling on somewhere. If it isn’t, you can get onto the internet and hit any number of websites to view matches or complete shows. We literally have 24/7 access to wrestling.
So why are television ratings dropping? One reason could be that with so much else out there people aren’t watching live shows as much anymore. After all, in 1999 a segment between the Rock and Mick Foley drew a monstrous 8.4 rating with a 6.8 for the night. The same night’s Nitro drew a 3.0.
It’s no secret that the viewers have been dropping. Even when WCW was drawing 2’s and 3’s, they still had a steady viewership. Now, seven years after the company’s closure, those fans are gone. It’s likely they aren’t watching any wrestling anymore. A large chunk of the WWE’s live audience is gone as well. TNA is battling to keep Impact’s ratings above a 1.0.
Another reason is the fact that so many independent companies are selling DVDs at reasonable prices now. Ring of Honor sells DVDs of their events for $20 and also run regular sales (on a side note, as I write this, several of their older shows are on sale for $5 each). Pro Wrestling Guerrilla lists their DVDs at $14.99 each with package deals available. Chikara’s DVDs are also $20 each. OVW offers their weekly television shows on DVD for $12.95 each. Almost every other top indy promotion also has their shows available on DVD for a reasonable price as well.
In 2001, the amount of wrestling available was much smaller. While the major federations have always offered shows for home release (first on VHS and then on DVD), it’s only over the last several years that so many independent groups have begun releasing their own footage.
The rising amount of independent footage is also tied directly to the rise of independent promotions. When the WWF-WCW war was heating up in the 90’s, independents were viewed as second-class companies with lower rate wrestlers. Today the independents have reinvented themselves as companies who offer an alternative to the WWE’s brand of sports entertainment and offer a broad range of styles. There are companies that focus more on high-flying. There are companies that focus on harder-styled wrestling. There are hardcore companies. There are companies that take the idea of sports-entertainment and crank it up to 11 to entertain the audience.
So why aren’t people watching Raw? Because they don’t have to. During the WCW war if you didn’t like what one company was doing you could switch the channel to the other. Now all you have to do is pop in a DVD or a tape and you’re set for the evening.
And what will the longterm effect be of the giveaway? First, they’re only giving away unspecified “shares,†which will certainly be nowhere near to the million. They’ll get some headlines and see a bump in Raw’s rating, but once the hype dies down things will be back to where they were. And the problems will still be there.
How can the problem be fixed permanently? It’s starting to look like the WWE doesn’t know.
