3 possible ways Vince McMahon can improve the poor ratings
WWE is the biggest sports entertainment company in the world, and the expectations are always sky-high. While RAW runs for three hours every week, SmackDown Live is a two-hour show. Being under pressure to fulfill the expectations of the fans, the company fails to deliver on occasion.
WrestleMania season ended in April when the company recorded good ratings. Following the Showcase of Immortals, the ratings generally decline. According to the Wrestling Observer, RAW had all-time lowest non-football season ratings last week with 2.16 million viewers. While WWE did better this week with 2.24 million viewers, it was up just four percent, and it was the second-lowest non-football season episode of the flagship show.
The poor ratings certainly gave a headache to Vince McMahon last week, as it coerced the Chairman to make some surprise decisions. The introduction of Wild Card Entry was a desperate move to spike the ratings. Time will tell if that will be good enough.
The WWE Universe has been vocal about the quality of the product on social media. Both RAW and, to a lower extent, SmackDown Live have been inconsistent in delivering awe-inspiring episodes every week.
Here we discuss three things Vince McMahon must do to improve ratings.
#3 RAW should be a two-hour show
Monday Night RAW has been around for over twenty-five years, and it is the longest-running weekly episodic television show in the United States. Earlier, it was a two-hour show, but it turned into a three-hour show on the 1000th episode of the red brand, and has stayed that way the last seven years.
With a big roster of the red brand, the time scale seems great, but it becomes tedious for the viewers. As a matter of fact, the viewership starts to decline in the last hour, which suggests that the fans begin to lose interest. An action-packed two-hour episode could be perfect for retaining viewership throughout the show.
SmackDown Live is a two-hour show. Since RAW is called the flagship show, the blue brand does not get the same numbers as the red brand. However, cutting the last hour could do wonders for RAW, and we might get a better quality of the product with fewer filler matches.