This is what’s come to…WWE literally paying people to watch their show. Over the past couple of months WWE has slowly declined in the ratings. Last weeks RAW got a 2.9 which JR even acknowledged on his blog.
To get these fans back, WWE came up with the million dollar giveaway which was explained last night. Even Vince acknowledged that this move is to get fans back, raise ratings and possibly get new fans in the process. He even used the tried-and-true (word?) method of making it us vs them: Wrestling Fans vs Snobs.
In my opinion, this is a F’n joke. WWE is taking the lazy way out and throwing money at their problem. If you want to raise ratings & get fans back then you need to put out a better wrestling show. It’s just that simple. Don’t giveaway millions of dollars. At best, WWE will raise the ratings in the short-run, but this does nothing for the long run. Vince cannot give out millions or hundreds every week to keep ratings up. It’s a stupid idea. How does giving away money explain why ratings are down? It doesn’t. WWE doesn’t care about the reason people are leaving, they only care about the numbers and keeping the USA Network the #1 cable network. The fans are the ones getting screwed and I bet you some non-wrestling fan will win the money because his/her friend, a true wrestling fan, told him/her about it.
Fans are leaving because WWE is boring. Plain and simple. I watch RAW every week because I’m still a fan, but it doesn’t mean I like what I see. But overall, WWE has not been exciting. It was exciting during WrestleMania, but if you take that week out of the equation then it’s been boring for a very long time. I think fans are not excited anymore. They are not entertained, they are not interested and thus they are not watching the show. How does money fix that problem? It doesn’t. Having PPVs rotate around Cena, HHH, Orton and JBL for months on end is not entertaining. Having PPVs rarely reach 11PM EST is not entertaining. Having TV matches last 5 – 7 minutes is not entertaining. Having wrestlers talk instead of wrestle is not entertaining. WWE has watered down their show so much that JBL “bleeding” from the mouth is considered first blood.
What did WWE do when they were losing in the ratings to WCW? They changed the show. They introduced the “Attitude” era and things turned around. We got new wrestlers, new personas, new storylines, new excitement and the ratings went up. This is exactly what WWE needs to do again. They need to work on the content of the show.
If I were a strategist, I would use the million dollar giveaway to keep fans tuned in to the draft. Then I would use the draft to make huge changes (and I do mean huge, like HHH going to Smackdown). I would use the night of the draft to actually change the content of the show. I would begin new feuds, introduce new characters and use the show as a rest button. Then the following week I would begin phasing out the giveaway and focus completely on the show and make things more entertaining (ie longer matches, new feuds, maybe a gimmick match). So basically I would use the million dollar thing to facilitate a new direction for the WWE shows.