What's WWE's strategy with all the repetition?

[________ has left the building]

Appealing to the medicated ADD/AHDD demographic.

[Nickybojelais]

The Usos & Goldust/Stardust encounters are taking repetition to a whole new level.

They have fought against each other on tv in either singles, tag & multi Tag matches at least once a week going back to the middle of August.

Raw August 18th
Raw August 25th
Smackdown August 26th
Raw September 1st
Smackdown September 9th
Raw September 15th
Smackdown September 16th
Night of Champions September 21st
Raw September 22nd
Smackdown September 23rd
Superstars September 29th
Raw October 6th
Smackdown October 7th
Main Event October 7th
Raw October 13th
Smackdown October 14th
Raw October 20th
Smackdown October 21st

There is no way you should be having in ring action with the same opponents for that sustained length of time.

[Hit Girl]

They are hoping you forgot about the last time you saw all the same shit.

[Nickybojelais]

Oct 22, 2014 6:22:12 GMT -5 Bo Rida said:

It hits me when they promote the European tour. The April tour ends and almost immediately they start advertising the one in November with essentially the same matches you're watching on TV at the time. Sure enough six months later nothing has changed unless somebody is injured or has left, even then the storyline is essentially the same.

I guess WWE is now too big to change things quickly depending on crowd reactions, they won't change plans to go with somebody that is unexpectedly getting over.
They have too many stakeholders to please, shareholders want steady growth not creative risks, tickets need to be sold months in advance, Mattel and 2K Sports (?) don't want their products to be out of date before they're even released etc.

tl;dr - WWE need to book things in safe six month blocks to please their stakeholders.

The upcoming Leeds show in November was even planned to have the exact same main event as we got in May (Orton v Reigns -Street Fight) until Reigns went down with his injury.

[Deleted]

Because they're a machine at this point. They can literally have Cena come out and fart on a wrist band for 3 hours and probably pull the same rating they do now.

They've created such a strong brand its basically a turn key operation that they've "franchised" out over the entire week.

Its a verified moneymaker.

It doesn't even matter who is fighting who anymore, because the WWE Brand is so entrenched in people's mind that it doesn't matter if its good or bad, old or new, logical or illogical, but as long as its get the WWE aesthetic (music, camera angles, etc) people will continue to watch. Its like McDonalds. Their burgers always are just ok or bland, and they've created 19 different burgers that are all basically the same thing, but people will always love it because McDonalds is a brand people are familiar with whereever they go.

[Dean-o]

Oct 22, 2014 12:08:08 GMT -5 Hit Girl said:

They are hoping you forgot about the last time you saw all the same shit.

No need to worry about that. Countless times there have been matches that took place on Smackdown with a rematch on Raw without any mention of their first encounter only 3 days ago.

It seems like Big Show/Henry took on The Wyatt Family 4 shows in a row and each time they sold it as something fresh.

[thelonewolf527]

Too many guys are hurt and with Lesnar not being around as often as champion, it prevents other guys from moving up. If Lesnar wasn't with WWE, I can guarantee you Rusev would be closer to the title picture, if not in it already.

[MichaelMartini]

Oct 22, 2014 7:09:40 GMT -5 ________ has left the building said:

Appealing to the medicated ADD/AHDD demographic.

I would say it's more for the Alzheimers/Senile/Short term memory loss brain damaged crowd.

The product seems to be designed for the very casual fan. Someone who might watch one of the tv shows once a month. Why they're doing this I have no idea. Maybe because they have mastered giving you the absolute bare minimum down to a science. It's like they're using house show booking for tv. There's no reason for it either. They released what, like 8 midcarders last year, broke up tag teams for no reason, have popular guys on the roster like Ryder that they hardly use, took the Wyatts and the new Nation off tv and they have a whole NXT roster that they could give the occasional Raw and Smackdown match too. There's no reason for the repetition, other than maybe the safety that comes with working with someone you're familiar with.

[DragonMasterP]

Wasting time until they can find another guy to throw into a Cena feud.

[MrElijah]

I honestly believe that this last 5 years will go down as The Missed Opportunity era.

Sure they had good, hell, great stuff, but it could have been SO much more.

[Sephiroth]

I don't think there really is one. I think injuries and walkouts prett much upended whatever plans they had, and they have had to do things more or less on the fly for most of this year.

[HMARK Center]

I remember feeling this way about the show when I watched more regularly circa 2004-2005; it felt like I was seeing the same match (or minor variations of it) each week, with Evolution facing basically all the main Raw babyfaces all year, and that the overall format and layout of the show felt nearly identical in terms of pacing, how promos and angles were shot and presented, etc. Any time I've tuned in in the years since, it's felt like incredibly little has changed. New faces, better quality HD picture, and probably more legitimate wrestling talent on the roster now, yes, but the same repetitiveness.

The ridiculous part of it is that they're just willfully ignoring "Storytelling 101" in so many different ways. When you want an audience to care about something, in particular a rivalry or a showdown between two people in one, the key goal is to refrain from having those rivals interact too often on the way toward the final showdown, but along the way the story they're involved in changes, develops, and has an impact on the character of both combatants. By just having the same matches every week, and having guys interact endlessly before a supposedly "final" showdown (e.g. having Ambrose and Rollins brawl in the Cell six days before their Cell match, AND giving away a pretty big potential spot in the process), all drama and interest is lost. We, as wrestling fans, may still say "Ok, the story sucks, but I want to see these two guys work together", but that's really not enough to hold a larger audience's interest.

But, well, WWE is the only game in town and has been for over a decade, so they don't really have to worry about 4,000 year old basic storytelling principles that have upheld human entertainment since the age of epic poetry and village bards. Let's have the IC champ lose on Raw again next week, instead, to build up a PPV match with the guy who just beat him!