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I think that the lack of "gimmicks" started with Tough Enough. Not saying that the show itself had that powerful of an effect on everything, but the fact that they were showing wrestling from the INSIDE of the business and depicting the wrestlers as "people" as opposed to "wrestlers".
Wrestling has always been plagued with the label "FAKE" by casual viewers or people who don't view at all, and thusly, they lose a lot of 'credibility'. By presenting the characters on the show as more realistic and humanistic, as opposed to characters like Doink, Bastion Booger, Damien Demento and such, I think they're trying to counteract that.
Furthermore, I think that the demographic that the WWE was pushing to primarily back when it was at its apex is maturing, and you can't get Undertaker-like characters over as easily. The fact that the Undertaker is over in his gimmick today, I would imagine is driven largely by nostalgia. If Mark Calloway had never been debuted on WWE TV until recently, I don't think it would have worked (SEE: Moredecai).
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