Originally Posted by Kane Knight
The hate predates him being "the company man." Smarks or otherwise, it's hard to call this the cause of the hate, since it comes afterwards.
Again, booed before then. Not that I can't empathise with adults in a market which courts the male 18-34 demo while their number one guy is courting children.
But enough about Vince's sex life....
Untrue.
WWE maintained solid ratings leaving the Attitude Era. While they could no longer maintain 6-8.0 ratings, what they did was not only respectable, but had the honor of topping the Nielsens almost any week sporting events weren't on cable. They regularly did 4.0s and higher, which translated into 6-8 MILLION or more.
Now, they only make it to the top ten half the time, even without major competition, they're being beaten by Nickelodeon shows (this will be important later), and they top at about five million. That's the top. So they've lost over 3 million on average. When did that start? Not the end of the Attitude Era. The beginning of the Cenation....Since then, they've gone from fours to mid threes to mid twos.
So, they're appealing to children. Children tend to want a lot of merchandise, which works. These same children aren't affecting the market, not in a positive sense.
WWE is now facing dedicated children's programming. While they're losing the adult viewers, they aren't significantly picking up the children. Part of this may be the fact that WWE Monday Night Raw is on at 9 PM, but the bottom line is, on most weeks, WWE is losing to Spongebob, Zack and Cody, iCarly, etc. The week of the fifth, which was a GOOD week for WWE, had four kids programs on it, and WWE barely beat out reruns of NCIS for the 3 and 4 slots. Where does this ratings boon factor in? Oh, right. It's gone.
Allow me to translate.
"Always" is Noid-speak for "anything short of nothing."
Replace Noid-speak with smark-speak if you like. Same diff. Noid's just a particularly rabid one.
Still, Cena has had amazingly long title reigns and held the belt a Hell of a lot. Hyperbole aside, there is a valid point there.
Really? Edge winning the title provided a larger increase in ratings, and that was even less temporary. He's selling more merch, the only true part of the statement, attendances are down in both seats sold and buys. Gates are up because they increased ticket prices. Even WWE's financial reports admit this.
Ticket sales and PPV buys also=money. Unfortunately, those numbers are dwindling, so we're not looking at a great run overall here. Losing fans will hurt merch eventually, and WWE can't continue to just jack prices to keep the gates up. Eventually, they price themselves right out of their desired market.
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