5 ways in which WWE can improve Monday Night Raw and SmackDown
Monday night Raw and Smackdown live are two of the longest running weekly episodic TV shows in history for a reason. They have been a mainstay in WWE television for over two decades for Raw and approaching 20 years for SmackDown.
There is little room for improvement, especially when it relates to the bottom line for both shows, who is anyone to argue with the success the WWE has enjoyed with both shows for as long as they have been running? In terms of the basic formula, there remains little in the way of necessary improvement. However, this is not to say they do not occasionally mess up, get things wrong or that the product should move in a different direction.
For the most part, both main shows enjoyed the majority of their success during the period of 1998-2001 and the Monday night wars. This was in part due to their rivals WCW surpassing WWE in the ratings wars. If Raw and SmackDown drew from the formula's that made it so successful in the late 90's and early 2000's then the product can benefit overall.
In recent years Raw and SmackDown have become the prelude to the pay-per-views, if they were to instead become the centre-piece of WWE programming, with the pay-per-views in between, then WWE's product as a whole could be more prosperous.
#1 Make Raw and SmackDown compete against each other
A way of improving both Raw and SmackDown could be to have the two brands as separate entities and face off over the year for television ratings. This could boost the stock of both shows and give each brand their own identity.
By making Raw a two-hour show again and airing both shows on the same night, they could compete for ratings and challenge each other for brand supremacy. Putting in place this competition could improve the quality of both shows, in a similar way in which the Monday night wars brought out the best in WWE and WCW.
By completely splitting the wrestlers, commentary teams, writing staff, referees and backstage talent, as well as giving each brand their own identity, healthy competition could be created. With Vince McMahon in charge of Raw and Triple H taking over duties on SmackDown, or something similar to this, it could make for a more engaging product and allow the WWE to experiment with new ideas to appeal to new, casual and lapsed fans.