The Ichi
Patti Mayonnaise
AGGRESSIVE Executive Janitor of the Third Floor Manager's Bathroom
Posts: 37,315 
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Post by The Ichi on Jul 21, 2019 19:58:06 GMT -5
This was an interesting interview to read, but I think it focuses far too much on the content of WWE programming as the cause of the company's ratings woes. While I wouldn't dismiss WWE programming as a cause, the creative choices WWE has made over the past several years are symptomatic of the format of their live TV shows and even the PPVs. The format of today's WWE TV programming is antithetical to how younger people consume their media. One, younger people are less likely to have a cable TV subscription, maybe even a network TV package through a service provider, because they're a significant cord cutting group. So having TV shows that air on USA and Fox is already missing the mark (and missing "the mark"). Two, younger people watching YouTube videos that are 10, 20, or 30 minutes long. They binge-watch a Netflix show, then move on to the next thing. They watch 2-3 minute videos on Twitter and even shorter videos on Instagram. A 3-hour TV show, that runs every Monday night, that has been 3 hours long for 7 years, that feeds into another 2 TV show or a 4+ hour PPV that airs on the weekend, is not conducive to how young people watch content. YouTube personalities and Instagram influencers are also of the younger demographic that WWE can't seem to reach. Perhaps there's a correlation that young people who don't watch WWE at the very least like to watch other younger people available on other new media. In this case, the current crop of WWE's younger stars are probably a bit too old. The next up-and-coming YouTuber will likely be 20 or 21, if not younger. The next big WWE star will probably be 28, 29, or 30. WWE seems really shy to push a younger adult in the role of a top star. Roman Reigns is 34. Finn Balor is 37. Becky Lynch is 32. WWE isn't going to make a 22 year old man or woman a world champion. Again, for a 12, 17, or 22 year old kid, what's the hook to watch WWE TV? After all of this, then I think you can get into the issue of promos, characters, angles, booking, pushes, etc., that wrestling fans have (rightfully) complained about ad nauseam. Because WWE could do everything right that internet wrestling fans want when it comes to promos, angles, booking, and pushes, but it still probably wouldn't be enough to attract a newer audience segment that doesn't know, and, more likely, doesn't care about whatever it is that WWE produces. This feels pretty off-base. WWE's social media is as big as anyones. They do an awesome job at getting their content to people who don't watch TV. At a quick count, the video clips from this week's Raw have over 12m views on YouTube. That's not as impressive as it sounds considering how huge Youtube is. |
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Post by Macho Pichu on Jul 21, 2019 20:01:44 GMT -5
This feels pretty off-base. WWE's social media is as big as anyones. They do an awesome job at getting their content to people who don't watch TV. At a quick count, the video clips from this week's Raw have over 12m views on YouTube. That's not as impressive as it sounds considering how huge Youtube is. Upload a video right now and tell me how many views it gets in an hour. Building a YouTube following isnt as easy as you make it sound. |
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The Ichi
Patti Mayonnaise
AGGRESSIVE Executive Janitor of the Third Floor Manager's Bathroom
Posts: 37,315
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Post by The Ichi on Jul 21, 2019 20:11:40 GMT -5
That's not as impressive as it sounds considering how huge Youtube is. Upload a video right now and tell me how many views it gets in an hour. Building a YouTube following isnt as easy as you make it sound. I'll get right on that. Got a billion dollars? |
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Post by Cyno on Jul 21, 2019 20:34:24 GMT -5
WWE's social media presence is one of the things it usually does really well. Granted, their numbers can be a little deceptive compared to sports leagues' numbers because WWE is so centralized in its media while the big sports leagues' social media is a lot more decentralized between its teams.
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Post by Final Countdown Jones on Jul 21, 2019 20:55:34 GMT -5
That's not as impressive as it sounds considering how huge Youtube is. Upload a video right now and tell me how many views it gets in an hour. Building a YouTube following isnt as easy as you make it sound. WWE isn't a lone person building themselves up a brand from nothing they're a billion dollar company that has spent decades on prime time television and has over 46 million subscribers. They're the seventh most subscribed channel on the entire platform. Considering only a handful of the videos they put up in a week ever crack a million and there's only two videos from TV last week breaking the 2 million mark, while the video for, say, the segment hyping the main event of their second biggest show of the year is under 500k. It really is difficult to build yourself a Youtube following, nobody's disputing that. But the fact is, WWE has a mammoth Youtube following and by and large, the people following them don't give anything resembling a f***. That's a problem. |
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Post by benstudd on Jul 22, 2019 1:08:15 GMT -5
As much as I hate their product I mean whatever we can call him, Vince creating the Network was a stroke of genius and it opened up a lot of possibilities for them. The guy sees things ten miles away before everybody a lot of times business-wise. Which is the opposite of what happened with MySpace really. He is a retrograde in pretty much every damn things except business.
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Jul 22, 2019 1:58:25 GMT -5
This was an interesting interview to read, but I think it focuses far too much on the content of WWE programming as the cause of the company's ratings woes. While I wouldn't dismiss WWE programming as a cause, the creative choices WWE has made over the past several years are symptomatic of the format of their live TV shows and even the PPVs. The format of today's WWE TV programming is antithetical to how younger people consume their media. One, younger people are less likely to have a cable TV subscription, maybe even a network TV package through a service provider, because they're a significant cord cutting group. So having TV shows that air on USA and Fox is already missing the mark (and missing "the mark"). Two, younger people watching YouTube videos that are 10, 20, or 30 minutes long. They binge-watch a Netflix show, then move on to the next thing. They watch 2-3 minute videos on Twitter and even shorter videos on Instagram. A 3-hour TV show, that runs every Monday night, that has been 3 hours long for 7 years, that feeds into another 2 TV show or a 4+ hour PPV that airs on the weekend, is not conducive to how young people watch content. YouTube personalities and Instagram influencers are also of the younger demographic that WWE can't seem to reach. Perhaps there's a correlation that young people who don't watch WWE at the very least like to watch other younger people available on other new media. In this case, the current crop of WWE's younger stars are probably a bit too old. The next up-and-coming YouTuber will likely be 20 or 21, if not younger. The next big WWE star will probably be 28, 29, or 30. WWE seems really shy to push a younger adult in the role of a top star. Roman Reigns is 34. Finn Balor is 37. Becky Lynch is 32. WWE isn't going to make a 22 year old man or woman a world champion. Again, for a 12, 17, or 22 year old kid, what's the hook to watch WWE TV? After all of this, then I think you can get into the issue of promos, characters, angles, booking, pushes, etc., that wrestling fans have (rightfully) complained about ad nauseam. Because WWE could do everything right that internet wrestling fans want when it comes to promos, angles, booking, and pushes, but it still probably wouldn't be enough to attract a newer audience segment that doesn't know, and, more likely, doesn't care about whatever it is that WWE produces. This feels pretty off-base. WWE's social media is as big as anyones. They do an awesome job at getting their content to people who don't watch TV. At a quick count, the video clips from this week's Raw have over 12m views on YouTube. As much as I hate their product I mean whatever we can call him, Vince creating the Network was a stroke of genius and it opened up a lot of possibilities for them. The guy sees things ten miles away before everybody a lot of times business-wise. Which is the opposite of what happened with MySpace really. He is a retrograde in pretty much every damn things except business. These two points speak really well to one another. Yes, WWE has 46 million YouTube subscribers, which is many more people who regularly watch Raw and Smackdown, more than those two combined no less. Yes, Vince McMahon was smart to cut out the pay-per-view company middle-man when he created the WWE network. But were I a WWE stockholder, I would ask Vince McMahon why he has monetized only 5% of his potential audience, i.e. the number of network subscribers, assuming that the number of WWE YouTube subscribers accounts for real, actual WWE fans worldwide. More precisely, I would ask how he would capitalized on the other 95% of the potential worldwide audience who has yet to subscribe to the WWE network. I think the same could be said for WWE TV. How can WWE get more people to watch Raw for 3 hours every Monday night? Imagine if every WWE YouTube subscriber lived in the U.S. Vince McMahon would thus be unable to reach 44 million Americans who are interested in his product, but not interested enough to actually watch it live, which is what USA, Fox, and advertisers are paying him exorbitant amounts of money for. These are the problems that can't be solved by Vince, Triple H, or Stephanie simply "doing better" by the content, the programming, and the wrestlers. As fans, of course, having a fun, exciting, entertaining product is what we care about first. 1997 Steve Austin could be the top star in 2019's WWE and pro wrestling as a whole would still be stone cold. |
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Post by Brian Suntan on Jul 22, 2019 3:34:17 GMT -5
This feels pretty off-base. WWE's social media is as big as anyones. They do an awesome job at getting their content to people who don't watch TV. At a quick count, the video clips from this week's Raw have over 12m views on YouTube. That's not as impressive as it sounds considering how huge Youtube is. Presumably there's a long list of entertainment corporations and sports leagues doing much better numbers regularly then? The game highlights from the Super Bowl on the NFL's channel add up to less than half that, and it was five months, not five days ago. UFC's content from 239 comes in at closer to 9m. And this is just a random Raw. If you want proof the WWE is in a death spiral and all McMahon's chickens are finally coming home to roost, I'm sure it's out there. But not in their social media numbers. |
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Post by eJm on Jul 22, 2019 4:40:08 GMT -5
The key thing about social media, though, is that they only make $9m a year from it. Not a month or a week, a whole year. There are people who have millions of views on their videos that don’t get out of bed for half that. Hell, that’s not even half of one Saudi show.
So those numbers do mean something, sure, but the reason that the Super Bowl is still where it is in terms of stature is that a lot of people watch that on Television rather than YouTube. Not as much as they used to but certainly more than a YouTube stream of a pre show for example.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2019 4:47:03 GMT -5
So AEW's gonna sell all my information and expose my personal info to hackers? Pass. The Young Bucks are looking at superkicking all your family photos as we speak fixed it for you |
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Post by Brian Suntan on Jul 22, 2019 5:41:44 GMT -5
The key thing about social media, though, is that they only make $9m a year from it. Not a month or a week, a whole year. There are people who have millions of views on their videos that don’t get out of bed for half that. Hell, that’s not even half of one Saudi show. So those numbers do mean something, sure, but the reason that the Super Bowl is still where it is in terms of stature is that a lot of people watch that on Television rather than YouTube. Not as much as they used to but certainly more than a YouTube stream of a pre show for example. Sure. But that's not really the point being made. Nobody is suggesting they are bigger than the Super Bowl, just that their social media numbers are impressive. And they are. There's no way they'd be able to convince networks that they can still reach certain demographics without their digital stats. It's worth way more to the business as a whole than $9m a year. |
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
HaHa U FaLL 4 LaVa TriK
Posts: 46,188 
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jul 22, 2019 6:48:14 GMT -5
This was an interesting interview to read, but I think it focuses far too much on the content of WWE programming as the cause of the company's ratings woes. While I wouldn't dismiss WWE programming as a cause, the creative choices WWE has made over the past several years are symptomatic of the format of their live TV shows and even the PPVs. The format of today's WWE TV programming is antithetical to how younger people consume their media. One, younger people are less likely to have a cable TV subscription, maybe even a network TV package through a service provider, because they're a significant cord cutting group. So having TV shows that air on USA and Fox is already missing the mark (and missing "the mark"). Two, younger people watching YouTube videos that are 10, 20, or 30 minutes long. They binge-watch a Netflix show, then move on to the next thing. They watch 2-3 minute videos on Twitter and even shorter videos on Instagram. A 3-hour TV show, that runs every Monday night, that has been 3 hours long for 7 years, that feeds into another 2 TV show or a 4+ hour PPV that airs on the weekend, is not conducive to how young people watch content. YouTube personalities and Instagram influencers are also of the younger demographic that WWE can't seem to reach. Perhaps there's a correlation that young people who don't watch WWE at the very least like to watch other younger people available on other new media. In this case, the current crop of WWE's younger stars are probably a bit too old. The next up-and-coming YouTuber will likely be 20 or 21, if not younger. The next big WWE star will probably be 28, 29, or 30. WWE seems really shy to push a younger adult in the role of a top star. Roman Reigns is 34. Finn Balor is 37. Becky Lynch is 32. WWE isn't going to make a 22 year old man or woman a world champion. Again, for a 12, 17, or 22 year old kid, what's the hook to watch WWE TV? After all of this, then I think you can get into the issue of promos, characters, angles, booking, pushes, etc., that wrestling fans have (rightfully) complained about ad nauseam. Because WWE could do everything right that internet wrestling fans want when it comes to promos, angles, booking, and pushes, but it still probably wouldn't be enough to attract a newer audience segment that doesn't know, and, more likely, doesn't care about whatever it is that WWE produces. I don't think "never trust anyone over 30" is going to work unless you Logan's Run everyone over 30 out of management, too. |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jul 22, 2019 9:03:27 GMT -5
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Post by Finish Uncle Muffin’s Story on Jul 22, 2019 9:20:36 GMT -5
Just wanted to call out that Alfred is one of their contributors, not a Forbes staff reporter. They've changed up the model and there are hundreds and hundreds of writers there now. That's no knock on Alfred's work, more so that the Forbes brand has been a little diluted since they made the change to include both contributors and reporters. The Variety piece should alarm the company more, IMO...
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paywindah
Dennis Stamp
He's goin' to da paywindah here on da muddaship TBS.
Posts: 3,678
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Post by paywindah on Jul 22, 2019 9:34:06 GMT -5
The Variety piece is just an opinion piece by someone with a history of being anti-WWE...
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Post by eJm on Jul 22, 2019 9:56:15 GMT -5
The Variety piece is just an opinion piece by someone with a history of being anti-WWE... On the flip side, nothing he’s really saying is wrong. Especially with the graphs and calling out some of the stuff from stockholder calls and the like. |
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jul 22, 2019 10:08:59 GMT -5
Wasn’t Vince just on the cover of Variety like two months ago? They REALLY must be sour on the wildcard rule.
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Post by Jedi-El of Tomorrow on Jul 22, 2019 10:18:18 GMT -5
You have to wonder what the McMahons think of this kind of coverage from legit news outlets. This has now gone way beyond internet fans grumbling and the occasional crowd hijacking in a "smart" city. This is the WWE's creative machine being outed as a suckfest by people in the larger TV and entertainment industries, with Vince himself identified as one of the main obstacles to his own company's success. You can't just chest-puff and keep doing things the same way at this point, especially if you're a publicly traded company. Or maybe, if you're Vince, you're so arrogant that you believe you can do exactly that.I don't think WWE is quite into MySpace territory where they're beyond turning things around. I mean, look at the WWF in 1994. It was so uncool it hurt. Three years later, they ditched most of the cartoon crap and caught fire. But it's because they realized their survival was at stake against WCW and knew they needed to change. Here, I think they don't realize it yet because they're not financially in the same dire straits. But how soon until that noose tightens? It seems unavoidable unless Vince backs off the overscripting and starts giving fans more of what they want, or unless the rest of the family can muscle him out somehow. Vince probably doesn't really give a shit. It was reported that Stephanie, Shane, and Trips have all talked to Vince about changing his ways and changing the way WWE does things, and he refused. Everybody around Vince has seen what's going on, and knows there's a huge problem, Vince doesn't see any of that. |
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Jul 22, 2019 10:50:31 GMT -5
I don't think "never trust anyone over 30" is going to work unless you Logan's Run everyone over 30 out of management, too. I'm not necessarily endorsing this idea, I'm just trying to make sense of WWE's past decisions and what current popular culture indicates. For example, history shows that WWE is reticent to push younger talent really hard for a long time. Brock Lesnar was 26-27 in 2004 when he left the company because he didn't like the travel. Randy Orton was 23-24 when he won the WHC and he's been a problematic talent for the company for years, and especially when he was younger. More recently, Paige was 21 when she debuted on Raw and developed personal/health issues, which many attributed to her age and how that influenced her behaviour. WWE seems to avoid pushing younger talent for the following reasons: they don't have enough maturity or life experience to handle being on the road, the risks of the party lifestyle (drugs, alcohol, prescription meds, etc.), the lack of work experience when so many modern talents are WWE home-grown, etc. But when it comes to the young=popular push, at a time when PewDiePie has more than double WWE's YouTube subcriber count. Kylie Jenner has six times as many Instagram followers than WWE, and Taylor Swift has 30 million more Facebook likes than WWE, WWE's finger is most definitely not on the pulse. I think how WWE gets, and doesn't get, its content to younger people is more of a problem than the content itself that WWE produces, although that also needs a lot of work. And for USA, Fox, and companies that buy ad time during WWE TV, WWE's social media numbers, as great as they are, mean little if those people who aren't watching remain uninterested in tuning in, and mean little to WWE itself if those people refuse to buy the WWE network. |
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Post by eJm on Jul 22, 2019 11:07:16 GMT -5
The key thing about social media, though, is that they only make $9m a year from it. Not a month or a week, a whole year. There are people who have millions of views on their videos that don’t get out of bed for half that. Hell, that’s not even half of one Saudi show. So those numbers do mean something, sure, but the reason that the Super Bowl is still where it is in terms of stature is that a lot of people watch that on Television rather than YouTube. Not as much as they used to but certainly more than a YouTube stream of a pre show for example. Sure. But that's not really the point being made. Nobody is suggesting they are bigger than the Super Bowl, just that their social media numbers are impressive. And they are. There's no way they'd be able to convince networks that they can still reach certain demographics without their digital stats. It's worth way more to the business as a whole than $9m a year. But those also aren’t the stats they can use to say why viewership is down. Like, the logical response to “We have 1 billion social media followers” is “Why aren’t a billion people watching the shows then?” |
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