Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Nerfect
The other wrestling forum I am part of's ratings thread is more active than it's SmackDown thread, lol. This is getting to be a "story." Investors actually questioned the falling ratings, and as they fall way faster than other cable properties, it's only going to be questioned more and more, by all sorts of stakeholders.
This could snowball, and I am very excited to see what happens next week. And when you're ratings are more exciting than your TV product, then you're in real shit.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KIRA
It was bound to happen sooner or later right you can only insult your fans with garbage for so long operating them for hating the fact that you're giving them garbage and blaming them before they just say f*** it and change the channel or go do something else.
Vince's entire deal as noted by osw review is you don't like what you like I tell you what you like.
And if it's not clear by now that that is not the way this works then there's no hope for this company as long as he's at the helm.
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--- Incoming TL;DR post ---
And I find this all the more ironic, considering NXT is better than the primary roster shows, and it is buried on the Network. If *that* were on TV where more people could see it, it would be ruined as well by trying to make it "consumer friendly" instead of keeping what attracts fans in the first fucking place. They already prove it by screwing over 90% of the call-ups, no matter how well they prominently were featured; they essentially make these folks "start over - again", since they likely had to start over in NXT to begin with.
Though I feel there is a degree of Vince being "out of touch", I don't think it is so much that he doesn't have "it" anymore as much as "it" doesn't jive with corporate think in a massive publicly traded company. The man is trying to serve two masters, and both of them suffer for it.
I saw a vid earler about how shitty the new Sonic movie trailer is, and heard one simple quote that is applicable:
"This looks like it'll please a borardroom."
It is applicable here as well. They keep doing shit that makes advertisers and shareholders happy and keeps parent's groups relatively quiet... but that comes at the detriment of keeping what is cool about wresting as an attraction. They spend more time trying to shape it into their "live action-adventure drama series" or whatever the fuck they categorize it as when they talk about RAW being the longest running of it than to cultivate and sustain what keeps fans relatively happy and wanting more.
They're quick to say stuff like "x isn't a draw", but in the current environment, who is - or can be? Most of the roster is filled with interchangable jobbers. That may not have been the intent, but it sure as hell is what they present them as. Titles are just a thing you have (or, in the case of the women, it is your turn for) not a thing people battle for. There was a point where Nakamura was numero uno hot shit IN SPITE OF HIS ENGLISH NOT BEING GOOD, and they did fuck all with that. Basically squandered it in short order, even with the golden heel turn, amounting to nothing, and then just randomly teaming with Rusev because reasons.
Meanwhile, on the other end (and this isn't really an excuse to bag on him this time) you have Roman Reigns, who is clearly supposed to be the mold of a champion. To the point that they were doing cart-before-horse advertising with him, making him SuperCena II, and throwing every bell and whistle into trying to get him over as that guy up to and including having one of the most popular wrestlers in the history of EVER actively endorse that guy... and through none of that did they realize (or, if they did, didn't care) that all of those things were a pretty large factor in why it is so hard to get him over. Baron Corbin is getting the reaction they want him to, but not for the reason why. It is not because he is a great heel who generates massive heat, it is because the fans percieve it as trolling by WWE, and they really don't want to see the guy. To paraphrase Cornette: "It isn't we want to see this heel get beat up, it's we don't want to see this heel!" Before, it was likely they'd pick up on that and adjust accordingly. Now, it's like even if they know, fuck it because he's getting boo'd.
Most of this shit consists of blatantly shallow attempts. Just like it was blatant and shallow to try to make Jinder a world champion
right before attempting to crack the market in India. Just like it was blatant and shallow to try to build a roster around Eva Marie because she "is hot" (and I always feel that I have to object to that) and she apparently came across as a bitchy heel on an auxillary show nobody regularly watching wrestling gives much of a fuck about. TJP's whole gimmick screamed of being a corporate image of "what all the kids are into nowadays". I seriously believe deep down that the whole reason for the pre-injury push for "Ali" was exactly the same as the aforementioned Jinder push, just for another Middle Eastern show instead... his size deficiency was overridden by him being brown. They constantly try to find a replacement for Rey for a Mexican market, but most of the time, they keep trying to distill him to flippy shit and masks to sell to kids instead of the fact that, at this point, Rey is a goddamn legend.
They just need to re-evaluate the fact that they're going more off the rails because they're just not that cool thing to watch anymore. Cool things happen occasionally, but not often enough. Cool personalities emerge, but it is often
in spite of WWE, not because of their creative direction. They've become tryhards in the game they pretty much wrote the rules for. They need to go back to what go them to their prominence in the first place and stop trying to manufacture shit in time for investor reports or a particular foreign tour.