True. Who would've thought back then that WWE would be even worse some 9 years later?

I try to think back to a time where I've been happy to be a fan, haha. Even back in my Val Venis-obsessed days, my enjoyment of his selling on Heat was getting me through some dark times, haha.

I remember being fond of 2008. Maybe not the entire year, but WrestleMania that year stands out, and the random pushes for CM Punk, William Regal and Brian Kendrick felt good -- even if two of the three got in the way of theirs.

The Shield kicked ass in 2013 and 2014, but it never felt like the whole product was up to them and Daniel Bryan. I feel a bit spoiled whinging about that though. But it's been a long time since wrestling has been "good."

I like them as a team. They have clearly watched tape and are trying to implement psychology into what they do, which is automatically appreciated. I love the way Dawson takes the lead and Wilder basically plays the spoiler. It's a great dynamic in a world where tag team partners are interchangeable and everyone does the same thing.

A problem facing them is their size. Neither guy is a heavyweight, to my knowledge, which means that them working as bad-ass ring generals kind of lacks...panache. When they're out there against guys like Gargano & Ciampa it doesn't matter so much, but I'm not sure how easily I buy them working heel against bigger dudes, you know?

I've seen some things on here about their personality. I like what they're doing. They're supposed to be dry. Dawson can talk well enough when he needs to. If you plug them in as the antithesis to a team with personality, it would work. The problem is if Vince sees them and casts them as "boring guys" in his mind.

They're a team you book with a purpose. You either have babies you want them fuck up, or you bring in babies for them to fuck up. When they're just plugging in to different tag team matches with each and every tag team, I worry that they will lose their charm.

I like them, but I worry for them, and I don't know if the WWE is going to be able to implement them the way I'd like to see them implemented. But given they don't like to fire people, I can see them having jobs for a long time, and at least being heel lackeys to someone.

That's pretty racist.

The Revival are/were at their best when they can work long-form matches packed with psychology and brilliant storytelling. They were always going to be fucked on the main roster where they're expected to get their shit in in five minutes or less.

That's pretty funny.

It's weird, because I remember there being trepidation about them getting called up, but I feel like hopes are always high for some stupid reason. :lol:

Wonder how much NBC now really regrets giving WWE $300+ million per year for RAW considering this week's episode set the record for least viewed of the year and since June 2017.

Last week's taped UK episode did better than this week's live episode which almost never happens for RAW.

Probably not much! I'm sure they've been keeping up w/ the numbers prior to the deal.

All tv numbers are trending down. What would they put in that time slot thats going to get 2.5 million viewers?

X rated suits tv show.

Nothing for the time being due to USA Network being terrible at creating new big hit shows.

The real problem is WWE's numbers are actually trending lower percentage wise than the yearly average across tv which is why it seems insane NBC is paying that much for RAW going forward. UFC being on the market the same time as the WWE ending being the best thing to happen to the WWE since they got to take advantage of the bidding war for UFC.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent reruns.

Yeah, I'm sure I've read that the WWE is decreasing a rate faster than television in general. The deal makes sense for USA, because they need something, but I just get hung up on that number. The competition from FOX makes sense as a haggling tool in the WWE's favor, but I'm not sure that the television bubble is just going to keep increasing and increasing for WWE.

The deal includes the reality shows, which do well. It wouldn't surprise me if there are more on the way too. They've got that Miz one coming out. It wouldn't surprise me if Rusev & Lana get one at some point. I mean, they effectively cancelled SmackDown with this deal too. It's a very weird deal that makes sense when you put into the perspective that NBC Universal wants to keep them and has to make a competitive offer with FOX that is scared they are going to lose UFC.

Vince is more lucky than good in this scenario, although I'm sure he would never call it that.

FOX is also selling off all of their in-house studios as part of the rumored Disney deal so it makes sense they splurged on Smackdown. Need the show and WWE in general to help fill in the gap for live content going forward.

Funny thing is FOX already has a show that performs a lot better and likely way cheaper at the Friday spot Smackdown is going to take. Only downside is the cooking contest show isn't on every week unlike Smackdown.

It's a weird time in television.

I'm sure there's no shortage of reality competition ideas they could come up with that would be cheaper to produce and pull better ratings than Smackdown.

SD hit it's lowest rating since October 2017. Really too bad since the show was great this week.

Wait so the pretaped out performed the live show? Ouch

America's Next Toilet Cat would surely be a bigger star than even heel Shinsuke Nakamura.

This week's RAW almost set the record for least watched episode since the end of the Attitude Era.

Shady reporting though...

Raw only underperformed against the NBA and for love and hip hop. Love and hip hop seems to be a hit. But ultimately it essentially is 3rd hottest show on tvs 2nd biggest night.

But that snippet is some doom and gloom.

Just shows you how easy it is to use facts to shap a dishonest narritive

It has been setting a few dubious records and marks since Mania ended which should be a bit concerning. Even in terms of pace, this yea's post-Mania season is dropping faster than last year's by about 2-3 weeks. Need to check the numbers but think the 3rd hour is well on pace to hit a sub-2 million number faster than it ever did before.

PWI's report on this week's number did the comparison with last year's Memorial Day and the drop was tiny (2k) compared to this year's drop (174k).

Those trends are comparable for all television. All of it. TV is dying. The WWE is one of the few things doing well.

100% agree. Raw always gets lower ratings on Holidays, and it was against a game 7 NBA Playoff game, plus the NFL Stanley Cup. Raw being down 230,000 people from last week is nothing all things considering.

Thing is is its a perspective issue. Lower doesnt mean low and it certainly doesnt mean bad. These are strong ratings in 2018. TV markets are shrinking. Its legitimately having its death rattle. Its as dead as radio.

Also 100% correct. TV ratings are such an old way to gauge success. Networks like Fox are dumb enough to cancel a show like Last Man on Earth that only gets a 4 rating, so they cancel it.

They literally don't factor in all the whole picture stuff like if it has great DVR numbers, or a bunch of streaming views on Hulu, which Fox partly owns, making it more idiotic that they still go by the old ratings to make those decisions.

If you think the show is performing poorly and you followed the universal and fox deals you have an outstandingly poor ability to extrapolate information for yourself. The sheets are written by morons.

Or are we actually saying that dave meltzer and friends have a better handle on the tv market than nbc and fox

This is true, but then there are other perspectives to consider. It's basically where it places in the night that is most important right now, and how that affects advertising revenue. Raw could retain the same amount of viewers, but if more people were watching 9 other things (and that's not going to happen with the same amount of viewers), then it'd be a lot less valuable. Then you've got to consider how much money they are paying for TV rights versus production on other shows. How much are those 3 million pairs of eyeballs worth?

At the end of the day, I actually do question whether or not this is the soundest plan by NBC or Fox. Just because with those trends going down, and they are going down faster than most other television seems to be, from what I can detect anyway, then at some point you have to question whether or not it is worth it for this programming. Where is the magic line where you start getting buyers' remorse, because death rattle or not (and it is a death rattle), then where do you stop spending much on so few, even if they are a lot comparatively?

Hmm, well, that could be a wash...

Id like to see some data that suggests their downward trend is in anyway worse than the average.

And yes at some point advertisers are going to regret their purchase but its likely to not be on the 3rd highest veiwed show in prime time on mondays.

Inevitably the add dollars will shrink with the shrinking market and when that happens tv products will get lower budget in turm.

Thats inevitable on the road to obsolescence. We are arent there yet. And raw is FAR safer than the bulk of other shows.

People in television recognize this. People who cover television recgonize this. People who cover market trends recognize this. Wrestling "journalists" dont. Why in the fuck is meltzer being entertained with this narritive?

He's talking out of his ass.

To your credit i do anticipate smackdown to fail on fox. The friday time slot will kill it. On a better night and i think it would have a ling life. But fox fridays are and always have been a death slot and in 2018 its worse than ever.

The mistep is the time slot though and nothing else. The install base is easily among the largest on tv

I'm sure I've read that somewhere. The numbers I can find from a few years ago says 8-10%, and I was under the belief the WWE was going down more than that on a yearly basis. But I just checked and apparently WWE is only losing 5%, but that was in millions of viewers, which is a mixed metric.

They dropped 10.5% for 2015's average versus 2014 and 14.4% for 2016. I'm not sure what the average rating was for 2017. Ratings seem to be hold steady for 2018 though, even though viewership is dropping.

So it's not appreciably outside the realms of the death of television, I guess. If they were going down faster than TV in general, they seem to have stopped falling so fast. And I do think television is catching up, generally speaking.

Quickest I could find compares RAW with the major cable networks in regards to viewership and prime-time.

According to Forbes, WWE's drop for RAW in 2016-2017 was 17.6% for the 1st half the year (Jan-June 2016, Jan-June 2017). Last year it was around 9.6% overall based on some quick math. Major cable networks averaged around an 8% drop overall last year with FOX and NFL contributing a lot to the hit.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alfredk.../#68e6c89577a0

https://www.thewrap.com/broadcast-tv...bs-abc-fox-cw/

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/26/medi...rks/index.html

http://www.wrestling-online.com/wwe/...t-raw-ratings/

credit - wrestlinginc

USA Network is basically paying $120 per viewer at this point.