WSX and TNA's major problem Spoilervision

[Hemmeorrhage]

I hate to say it, but I doubt that TNA or WSX will continue to grow unless they move to live TV. According to reports, WSX shot a whole season worth of matches at one taping. TNA does two shows per taping. Smackdown's numbers are always smaller than RAW. Notice a pattern here? I can't be the only fan that watches Wrestling via spoilervision. The problem with pre-taped shows is that you have to put on "must see TV" every week. You can't slack. Otherwise fans like me rarely tune in. I know all the Smackdown ins and outs, yet I have not watched the show in over a month. Spoilers may increase ratings if something major happens, however, the good does not come close to outweighing the bad. Look at ECW. Most fans feel that it is the worse televised wrestling show. ECW is on live/semi-live and does decent numbers considering its on a network that doesn't have nearly as many subscribers as Raw or Smackdown. If ECW was pre-taped every week, I think the numbers would be much worse. I believe the proof on its the effects of live vs. taped can be found at ECW house show attendence. If you corrolate Nielsen ratings to house show numbers for the three WWE brands, you will probably see that something is not right. ECW should have done alright based on the number of viewers. They ended up cancelling all the exclusive ECW brand house shows do to poor attendence. The reasoning is simple enough. People watch ECW and hate what they see. Fans won't pay to see a live show and only tune in because its live and spolers are not available.
If TNA moved to a live format, what kind of ratings increase could we expect?

[Deleted]

That doesn't make any sense to me, it's easy to not read spoilers.

[Ace Diamond]

nichotine said:

That doesn't make any sense to me, it's easy to not read spoilers.

True, but WSX does next-episode previews for their shows anyway.

[Hemmeorrhage]

nichotine said:

That doesn't make any sense to me, it's easy to not read spoilers.

I understand that. However, when the wrestling is not considered very good by fans, many will only tune in if they see something major when they read the spoilers. I use me as an example because its easy. I watch Raw every week. Sometimes it is painful to watch, but I do it. For the most part, I am pretty dissapointed in RAW. If I had the luxury of spoilers, I would not be as commited to making sure I am home to watch it. When they taped the show in Iraq, I tuned in late because I could live with skipping a few matches. Of course, this is assuming I don't DVR the show and skip over the painful parts. Nielsen is still trying to figure out the DVR effect on ratings and that is a subject for another website.

[Deleted]

I dunno, I see your point but IMO I don't think it would make a big difference, I'm sure at the same time there are people who like Smackdown and still read the spoilers. And like most usually say the IWC is a very small percentage of wrestling audiences, and typically we're the ones aware that there even are spoilers, so even if we all decided spoilers were enough and collectively stopped watching wrestling ratings probably wouldn't take a big hit I don't think.

[Hemmeorrhage]

Ok here is a link.. www.gerweck.net/ratings06.htm ..to the weekly ratings of all three WWE brands. ECW is averaging a 1.88 rating while Smackdown has an average of 2.46. Raw leads with a 3.90. ECW numbers are down considerably from the first few weeks. However,, if Smackdown can successfully run house shows off a 2.46 rating in medium size venues then common sense says that a 1.88 rating should be enough for ECW brand house shows to succeed in the small venues they were using. The ECW TV ratings were higher when they were running unprofitable exclusive ECW brand shows. The problem was that ECW was doing decent TV numbers, but people did not like the product they were watching. People watch because of the "live" factor and there are no spoilers to inform them that the show sucked again. If ECW was pre-taped like Smackdown, I think the average would drop to a 1.2-1.3. I think the spoiler factor is underestimated especially when the product is so bad. I could not believe my eyes when TNA announced that they would air a pre-taped "best of" special on the Monday night that WWE is bumped for the dog show. Talk about a missed opportunity. Go live and do it right.

[Chainsaw]

It's a problem to the IWC, which doesn't exist anyways.

It's science. McMahon science.

[Deleted]

I'm guessing less than 5% of fans read spolers.

You can also get spoilers for pretty much any TV show on the net. It doesn't seem to effect their ratings.

[Efren]

The cost and dificulty really outweights the benefits, its way cheaper to produce the way they are doing it...

TNA doesnt make money out of Impact anyway, it makes it due the live PPVs and Merch, of course they want bether ratings for Impact, It means more exposure for the PPV they are trying to sell and a bether ground to renegotiate their contract with Spike or any new tv channel, that way they can actually make monney out of the tv show eventually but they shouldnt shoot for bether ratings by doubling or triplicating each shows cost...
This way they can trim down the fat of segments they realise post shooting went too long, if the Hemme speech would have been on impact im sure they woulve trimed it.

And I wont even discuss WSX since their working model is so compleatley diferent than anything before, like it or hate it they are the wrestling company who has separated itselve the most from WWE's working model. We dont really know how its gona work out for them, maybe shooting a whole season in a jiffy cuting a bunch of costs is a great idea, maybe so is having seasons with time off between em and presenting "on the next episode" higlights... who knows.

[Chainsaw]

efren said:

The cost and dificulty really outweights the benefits, its way cheaper to produce the way they are doing it...

TNA doesnt make money out of Impact anyway, it makes it due the live PPVs and Merch, of course they want bether ratings for Impact, It means more exposure for the PPV they are trying to sell and a bether ground to renegotiate their contract with Spike or any new tv channel, that way they can actually make monney out of the tv show eventually but they shouldnt shoot for bether ratings by doubling or triplicating each shows cost...
This way they can trim down the fat of segments they realise post shooting went too long, if the Hemme speech would have been on impact im sure they woulve trimed it.

And I wont even discuss WSX since their working model is so compleatley diferent than anything before, like it or hate it they are the wrestling company who has separated itselve the most from WWE's working model. We dont really know how its gona work out for them, maybe shooting a whole season in a jiffy cuting a bunch of costs is a great idea, maybe so is having seasons with time off between em and presenting "on the next episode" higlights... who knows.

All good points. Impact actually still treasures the PPV's and those are where the real great matchups happen, while Impact serves more as a 4-week buildup to it. WWE, on the other hand, has almost taken the opposite mentality over the last few years, as the PPV's seem to matter less and less.

[cenas4dahkids]

there is only one show that is live in all of wrestling....

[Efren]

A friend and I were just talking about this and we came into the conclussion that spoilers are really undamaging to WSX.

Because its almost fully void of any storylines and seems like it will stay like that all season(tho I havent read the spoilers so you tell me) wins are nearly irrelevant.

So lets say they do a Human tornado vs Jack Evans match and you know Human Tornado wins it, does this mean HT will advance on the challenge for the title? does it mean he got to revange the injury of his friend? does it mean he got to stick it to the evil promoter character that made a contract that if he lost the match he would be vanished from the promotion? nah, it just means it was time to wrap up a spot-tastic match and they probably fliped a coin to see who would get to catch a glimpse of the celling ligths.

No big deal, all a spoiler can tell you in this case is how good or bad a match was and considering the rooster I dont think thats something that has em shaking their boots. Its almost as irrelevant as reading spoilers for pimp my ride or next. "Ohhh so she asks the third guy who was a redhead to go out on a second date but he says hed rather keep the money, Im so not watching!"

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Good point though one problem. Less people actually watch Raw than Smackdown. Because broadcast TV ratings points equal more viewers than a cable point. So a network 1.0 does not equal a cable 1.0 and while I'm not sure of the numbers I think that when all is said and done SD gets more viewers

[wwerules60]

I agree, Smackdown would be so much better to watch if it was live and you didn't know what would happen.