Besides the late 80's every promotion that goes "Kid friendly" suffers in popularity

[Gertner]

The WWE seems to be going through another down time and really looking back at it, there is a pattern of a promotion going "kid friendly" and the product suffering.

The WWF during the earlly/mid 90's prior t the Attitude era was suffering horribly with wrestlecrap characters galore. This led to WCW's rise in popularity with the NWO and "edgier" programming. Then the Attitude era happened and the WWF's popularity rose, while the WCW ended up going kid friendly and suffering.

Now the WWE is back to being kid friendly and the product and the popularity dispite the "Did you Know" BS that the WWE shows every week. This is where a promotion could push the WWE for ratings and popularity. TNA has tried but keeps tripping over their own feet.

My question, does "kid friendly" really equal success when it has failed the last two times and is failing again?

[thedamndest]

Is your sig implying that if your aborted fetus were to fill out like that you wouldn't abort her because you find her sexually attractive?

[Gertner]

yeah, that's kinda sick, I'd better change that

[thedamndest]

Let it be known to posterity that Gertner's previous sig was that picture of Velvet Sky and the caption "I wouldn't abort that."

[FourFifty]

<img src=http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p98/antibimbo21/vsky2.jpg>

I need to see her naked.



Speaking of seeing her naked, I was just thinking about this today. It's time for RoH or PGW to step up and stand out. They could be the next ECW.

[Kane Knight]

WWE's actually smart to appeal to the kiddies. Merch sales are one of the things that are keeping them afloat amidst shitty ratings and decreased ticket sales. They can't book for shit and they know it, they've lost a lot of their fanbase, but kids control their parents' disposable income. Kids don't care how much the PPVs cost, or how much the tickets are.

Besides, they already think their fanbase as the collective intellect of a mob of five year olds. Why not make it true...Or more true?

[Destor]

RoH has stepped up nicely 450. It has compairible exposure to the old ECW and it's quality is with out a doubt up there. PWG on the other hand is a ways away from having a national presence. But most west coast wrestling does struggle.

[RGWhat316]

Yeah this pushing towards the kids kind of annoys me. The kids seem to be mostly the reason for pushes like Cena, Rey Mastryo and Hornswoggle. Since I'm not even in my teens anymore, most of this kid friendly stuff doesn't appeal to me too much. Even though I am still a fan. I do wish ROH would get bigger and give a challenge.

[Pardeep 619]

I don't mind the kid friendy programming on WWE so long as it is interesting (which it can be from time to time). However recently I am starting to get more disillusioned with watching Raw and Smackdown as both shows suck at the moment.

[Kane Knight]

Yeah this pushing towards the kids kind of annoys me. The kids seem to be mostly the reason for pushes like Cena, Rey Mastryo and Hornswoggle. Since I'm not even in my teens anymore, most of this kid friendly stuff doesn't appeal to me too much. Even though I am still a fan. I do wish ROH would get bigger and give a challenge.

But if Cena and Mysterio are making them so much money, perhaps there's something to it.

[Kane Knight]

I'm not saying I want them to book for kids or anything, BTW. I'm bored with most of wrestling right now, and don't care enough to go looking for smark-oriented programming. But seriously, it's hard to completely discount booking to kids as "failing," when it's probably the one thing that's keeping WWE from losing major amounts of money.

[Arashi Kage]

seriously... wwe is "kid friendly" now?!? So no more sexual angles, ambiguous dialogue, lowest common denominator type stuff? I haven't watched Raw in a couple years, but I can't imagine the modern era being interesting to kids. With guys like Cena, Randy Orton, etc.... wow, really cool characters :nono:

When I was a kid, the reason every kid I knew watched wrestling was because 1) WWF Superstars was on at noon after Saturday morning cartoons, and 2) Wrestling was so awesome with the larger than life characters, theme music, etc.

Part of the reason why WCW was so great at the start of the nWo era was because WWF was starting to get all these 'new' wrestlers and when discovering WCW on tv, it was like, "whoa, there is Hulk Hogan with Diesel, Razor Ramon, and there is Macho Man, Mr. Perfect (but he's not called mr. perfect), the steiner bros..... hahah, we always hated those guys, and hey, there's Virgil... but they call him Vincent??? wtf". I don't think it was entirely the more mature themes which added to the allure, but being able to see all our favorite wrestlers again. The random beat downs and spray painting, more mature stuff added to the appeal because at this point we were all in high school now and it was cool.

Since I haven't seen the WWE product recently, it's not fair for me to judge the "kid appeal", but I just can't imagine wrestling...er, sports entertainment...er, this entertainment (just read that headline about McMahon dropping the sports and wrestling words from WWE, wtf) being interesting to kids. But at the same time, I would imagine that the remaining audience is a more mature audience, and it sounds like the current direction is hurting that demographic.

[Kane Knight]

Worth noting that a lot of "kid" programming still panders to the LCD and adults with sex and violence. Cena does really well with the kiddies. Kids are probably propping up WWe right now, because they are losing the male 18-34 demographic, and that's the bread and butter. Christ, the WWF programming on saturday morning pandered with sex. Maybe not the same way, but it was another era, another time in what was acceptable.

[Mr. Nerfect]

WWE's actually smart to appeal to the kiddies. Merch sales are one of the things that are keeping them afloat amidst shitty ratings and decreased ticket sales. They can't book for shit and they know it, they've lost a lot of their fanbase, but kids control their parents' disposable income. Kids don't care how much the PPVs cost, or how much the tickets are.

Besides, they already think their fanbase as the collective intellect of a mob of five year olds. Why not make it true...Or more true?

So the WWE are smart because they appeal to kids after they put on a show that completely condescended to their older audience chasing away everyone but the kids? Come on.

[Mr. Nerfect]

At the very best, the kid marketing thing could be considering an interesting emergency tactic. If you're going down, you might as well go down making as much money as you can? It's good to get kids on board, too, because then they become the 18-34 demographic. Some say that wrestling is a cyclical business, but I think the promoters are what make it that way.

I disagree with the kid marketing for two very big reasons: The first is that a parent would have to be stupid to see the WWE as being ideal programming for children. It teaches you to use violence as the first and proper solution to a presented problem. The more useless and objectified a woman is, the more popular she deserves to be in the "WWE Universe." Characters who preach morals and responsibility are to be booed. Wrestling is really best when seen through the twisted kaleidoscopic vision of a male who at one stage has experienced adolescence.

The second reason I object to it, is that kids are going to find programming like wrestling whether or not it is geared to them or not. In fact, the more taboo it is, the more attractive it will appear to them. In fact, the more it is presented to their dad or older brother, the more likely they are to actually watch it. It has the same mystique as an R-rated movie.

The smart thing to do, from the WWE's perspective, is to optimised their audience by going after the largest slice of it possible. I'm not sure marketing to kids is achieving that goal.

[Kane Knight]

So the WWE are smart because they appeal to kids after they put on a show that completely condescended to their older audience chasing away everyone but the kids? Come on.

Oh Noid, I missed your complete bastardisation of history.

[Kane Knight]

Actually, I should probably replace "history" with "facts."

Though it doesn't particularly matter, since the big picture is greatly being missed here.