Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCrippyZ
They already have two separate creative teams, one for Raw and one for Smackdown. Assuming that the writing staffs will somehow improve or be able to write better midcard angles (or any angles for that matter) just because they'll have separate or smaller show rosters is an illogical fallacy. Vince still has the final say and unless that or Vince himself changes, nothing significant will change long term, even with a roster split.
In addition, there's no reason to assume that more of the roster will be utilized (booked or written) in an improved/positive way creatively simply because each show may have a need to use more talent each week. They'll still book and push the talent (based on talent type, politics, belief in success, i.e., pushing Reigns & Cena vs Ambrose, Wyatt or Ziggler) in the same way they've been doing because the writing staffs and ultimately the man in charge is going to be the same.
|
I get what you're saying but I don't necessarily agree.
For simplicity, let's say WWE has five feuds going on at once, all singles feuds. Under the current format, all five feuds are featured across both shows every week and little room is left for people not involved in those feuds to do anything. The feuds also get stretched incredibly thin because they keep trying to find ways to have the 10 characters in said feuds interact on two weekly TV shows a week. And to boot, they want most of those feuds to last more than one month. So there's a few months right there seeing more or less the same cast of 10 characters. Everyone else on the roster is irrelevant at this point.
Now take that same approach and apply it to the brand split. Now suddenly each brand has five singles feuds going on, and now 20 different characters are heavily involved on TV every week. And the interactions in each feud seem automatically more important because you only see it once a week. Each show now has more variety and you're increasing the number of relevant characters in the company.
The biggest knock I see people have of SmackDown (from myself included) is that nothing important ever happens there. Feuds that are promoted on Raw will get a throwaway match/segment on SmackDown to artificially continue it, and you're lucky if what happened on SmackDown is even relevant enough to be brought on Raw the next week. OK then - so why even watch SmackDown?
I just think unless you give SmackDown it's own identity and properly differentiate it from Raw, nobody will ever care. I haven't even watched SmackDown since the brand split ended because they've given me no reason to think I can see anything that I can't already see in the 3 hours I watched Raw.