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Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball
Might have been the Observer or F4W that had an article about historical breakdowns and while football has taken a bit of a bigger chunk this year away, majority of the decline is still on the WWE's end.
Even by Road to Mania standards, the audience and ratings have been dropping the past few years.
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I find a lot of people with newsletters and podcasts get out of their depth when talking about TV ratings in a historical sense.
If you talk to people in the TV business, you hear about DVR proof programs and their value. Sports leagues are one of the few remaining providers of such programming. A lot of sports execs have lined their pockets because rights fees have went through the roof due to this changing landscape. Unfortunately WWE isn't sports, so they don't have the same luxury. On top of that you have an increase in usage of things like You Tube, Hulu, etc for consuming entertainment. It all cuts into the overall audience on traditional TV.
If you read articles from Variety, they talk about declining ratings across the board. If for example USA's overall numbers were say up 5% YoY and WWE was down 10% YoY, then I would say WWE should be somewhat concerned. But everything I've read, the opposite is true. And the lesson from the Attitude Era was that you can draw 6-7 million viewers per week, but if advertisers are not willing to support your product, you won't see the benefits. So even if WWE dropped to 2 million viewers per week, if advertisers see them as more premium, WWE will net or ahead.